Arsenal sporting director Edu insists his 'unpopular' decisions helped fuel Gunners' title charge under Mikel Arteta

In a recent interview with Men In Blazers, Edu - who played for Arsenal in the early 2000s - said he has worked to bring the average age of Arsenal's squad down and helped get some of the club's top earners of the books since arriving in 2019. The sporting director believes this has had a big impact on the success Arteta is seeing on the pitch in north London.

Speaking in the interview, Edu said: "When you live in the football world, sometimes you have to make decisions simple and sometimes you have to make decisions even if it is not popular. When I joined, I looked at the squad balance, the positions, and the age of the group. There are three elements that you have to be really aware of. First of all, we have to see the age of the player. Then you have to see the salary of the player. And third, you have to see the performance of the player. If you have a player over 26 or 27 years, you need attention. If his salary is high, you need attention. And if he is not performing, you are dead.

"When I came to Arsenal, I saw all the squad, with respect, almost everyone was over 26, 27, on big salaries and not performing. If you have those three elements, which club in the world wants to come here and buy one of our players? No-one. Then unpopular decisions started to come. Because most of the players that have those elements, they have a fanbase and a media that love them. But for the club, it is not healthy sometimes to keep the player in that situation."

Arsenal's squad is looking stronger than ever thanks partly to the contributions Edu has made over the last five years. Arteta has been handed players like Declan Rice, Kai Havertz and Gabriel Jesus while the sporting director has worked to get the likes of Nicolas Pepe and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang out of the door.

Having already brought in Riccardo Calafiori this summer, Edu is now working hard to bring Mikel Merino to north London and continue strengthening Arsenal's squad. The Gunners will face Wolves on the opening day of the Premier League season which is now less than two weeks away.