Arsenal have confirmed the appointment of Raúl Sanllehí as head of football relations as the club continue to overhaul their player recruitment department following the appointment of Sven Mislintat as chief scout last week.
Mislintat arrived from Borussia Dortmund to replace Steve Rowley, who held the position for 21 years and spent 35 years at the club, before standing down this month. Dick Law, the American who has been the club’s chief transfer negotiator for eight years, is scaling back his work with Arsenal and has already returned to his homeland. The continuing overhaul also led to June’s recruitment of Huss Fahmy, a lawyer who was previously commercial and business affairs director at Team Sky, to focus on contracts.
Sanllehí is a former Barcelona director of football and worked at the Spanish club for 14 years. He will begin work at Arsenal in February and, according to an official statement, “lead future player negotiations and work alongside manager Arsène Wenger, chief executive Ivan Gazidis and contract negotiator Huss Fahmy. He will also represent and support the club with international and domestic governing bodies.”
On Tuesday morning, Yesterday Wenger said: “You have Dick Law who retires, and has gone back to the States. He is still with us for a while, but we look for somebody as well who has experience in negotiations. We have Huss, who is top drawer, but has just joined us, but is doing an excellent job. I rate him highly. There is still a need.”Wenger said yesterday that his vast managerial experience means he can identify the most able personnel on the continent, including both Mislintat and Sanllehí. “I know them all because I’ve been in the game before them,” he said. “So of course I know everybody in every club in Europe, basically I know them all.”
One thing Wenger no longer believes Sanllehí will have to deal with is the transfer of either Mesut Özil or Alexis Sánchez. For the first time he has explicitly ruled out the possibility of either player leaving in January. “Yeah, I rule it out,” he said. “In my head, they stay until the end of the season. That’s the decision I took at the start of the season. Unless something unbelievable happens there’s no reason why that should change.”
Having narrowly beaten Burnley 1-0 on Sunday Arsenal host Huddersfield tonighton Wednesday. D and, despite the looming visit of Manchester United on Saturday, Wenger insisted that his focus is entirely on the Terriers. “It’s a massive game for me,” he said. “I watched their [2-1 defeat] against Manchester City, they didn’t deserve to lose that game. These teams come from hell, they have to play 46 games in the Championship to get out of that. So when you play them you have to be ready for a fight. Especially in their first season, promoted teams have that kind of fighting spirit that makes them dangerous to any team they come up against.”