Arsenal’s head of recruitment Sven Mislintat is set to leave his post a year after being appointed, with the club scouring their global network in the search for a new technical director, Goal understands.
The German, nicknamed ‘Diamond Eye’ for his track record of finding top players, was appointed in November 2017 and immediately brought in highly-rated Greek centre back Konstantinos Mavropanos as his first signing.
Mavropanos was expected to go out on loan immediately after joining but such was his impressive form in training that then manager Arsene Wenger decided to keep him among the first team instead.
Former Dortmund chief scout Mislintat was keen on filling the newly formed technical director role at Arsenal but with the hierarchy looking elsewhere, it appears that his influence with regards to transfers is likely to decrease.
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Responsible for bringing in Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Henrikh Mkhitaryan to the Gunners last January as well as the summer signings of Lucas Torreira and Sokratis Papastathopoulos, the influence of Mislintat has been evident since his arrival at the end of 2017.
Mislintat was unavailable for comment when contacted by Goal, although it’s understood that head of football Raul Sanllehi is already making contact with potential technical directors including former Arsenal players Edu Gaspar and Marc Overmars.
Edu is currently technical coordinator for the Brazilian football federation while Overmars is sports director at Ajax. The latter was mooted to be in contention for a technical director role when Wenger was still manager two years ago, but the Frenchman turned down the chance to work with him.
Head coach Unai Emery remains keen on signing Denis Suarez from Barcelona on an initial loan deal which looks set to include an option to buy him in the summer. Sevilla midfielder Ever Banega has also been linked but Suarez remains the priority in the January transfer window.