Gunners Looking To Hire Highly-Rated Spanish Duo For Directorial Roles – Report

By The Editor
on 21st January 2019

Francis Cagigao and Monchi could soon take a place among the club’s hierarchy…

Arsenal are looking to promote Francis Cagigao to the role of head of recruitment, while famed sporting director Monchi is being eyed with a view to handing a technical director role, BBC Sport’s David Ornstein reports.

As per @DaveHytner Bellerín ruptured ACL confirmed in scan today, 6-9 months. Rest of squad were paintballing pre #MUFC. Francis Cagigao tipped by many to succeed Mislintat as HoR with Monchi among names for TD (no timescale). #AFC want 2 loan deals, 1 being Suarez but not close

— David Ornstein (@bbcsport_david) January 21, 2019

The club confirmed on Monday that Sven Mislintat would be leaving his post next month and the news came as no surprise to many with reports emerging last week indicating that a departure was imminent.

The former Borussia Dortmund man was brought in by Ivan Gazidis as a support for the eventual head coach; which happened to be Unai Emery.

Recent reports also claimed that an internal quarrel between Raul Sanllehi and Mislintat emerged about their shared different visions as to which players we’d target. Sven wanted the focus to be on his vast array of stats and files on each player while the latter relies on his extensive contacts book.

In fairness, Mislintat did bring in the likes of Dinos Mavropanos, Lucas Torreira and Matteo Guendouzi who’ve contributed immensely to our season so far.

Having said that, the show must go on and if we do replace the German with Cagigao, we’ll have a man who’s unearthed many gems himself.

The Spaniard urged Arsene Wenger to take Lionel Messi, Gerard Pique and Cesc Fabregas to north London in 2003, though the former duo’s moves were affected by legal ramifications.

However, Jose Antonio Reyes followed soon after and that was down to Cagigao.

In terms of Monchi, he is a world-renowned director of football who enjoyed a very successful spell at Sevilla with Emery as they conquered Europe’s second tier.

Now at Roma, Monchi continues to make teams with the smallest budgets highly competitive, as well as unearthing gems in the transfer market.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out over the next few months.