Edu to Forest, just as we were noting their figures were misleading ...

Next season is the 100th anniversary of the arrival of Herbert Chapman at Arsenal and we are running a series of articles looking at how Arsenal managed to secure him and what he achieved at the club.  You can follow the series here.

By Tony Attwood

When we worked on this morning’s piece which looked at how Nottingham Forest had managed to climb into the top four, none of us had any notion that Edu was about to leave Arsenal to go north – well at least as far as the East Midlands.

The man who is working on this mission is Evangelos Marinakis, of whom it has been said (see link); the owner of Nottingham Forest.  Some people are called larger than life – Evangelos Marinakis is also sometimes thought of as larger than his suit.  He is currently engaged in a legal dispute in which he is alleged to have been engaged in (and has strongly denied that he has been engaged) in a criminal organisation of which he is the head, while being “guilty of match-fixing practices including extortion, fraud and arson, as well as there being strong grounds to suspect him of deep and active involvement in international heroin trafficking.”

He’s also a man with interests in the rather interesting world of shipping, which is not to say there is anything wrong with shipping, but it is an area of work that occasionally gets mentioned in connection with unusual activities, as when Russians were being looked at in relation to their funds – some of which turned out to be on their boats.  But I stress we have no notion of anything untoward.

I suppose Edu going is a bit of a shock because there have been no rumours around about this, and because we always see pics of Edu and Arteta talking, generally each with a hand over the mouth to stop anyone making up what was being talked about.

And it is a bit funny given that we were just yesterday considering how Forest have risen up, suggesting the numbers might be a bit misleading – but Edu would know far more about that than we do.

But Edu will have to work his notice, and he’s not the only managerial assistant in the world.  There will be someone else who can get matters sorted.

Although I am not sure it has ever been confirmed, I always got the impression that Edu was the man who brought Martinelli to Arsenal, after Manchester United buggered around and couldn’t decide if to sign the young player or not.   But then again, no one is indispensable

Edu rose up to be technical director just four years ago, although it seems he has been here much longer, and it was he, according to reports, who was a major factor in bringing in Arteta.

He’s also the one who managed to bring the likes of Martin Ødegaard, Ben White, Gabriel Magalhães, Gabriel Jesus and Declan Rice to the club.

But there has always been a historic issue hanging over him arriving to transform the profile of Arsenal’s squad.  He did, after all, try and join Arsenal with a forged passport (being Brazilian of course he had no automatic right of residence that he would have with a Portuguese passport).   However Edu’s agent was mentioned at the time as being the man behind the scam – although of course again we don’t have any independent information on this.

Meanwhile some of the newspaper reporting of Edu’s departure is nonsense – he is now being blamed for the failure to sign a centre forward a nonsense story given the fact that last season Arsenal scored 91 goals – more than any season since 1953.

Now the Guardian is trying to turn on him for a lack of “genuine backups to Ødegaard or Bukayo Saka” – which is nonsense.  If there were a player on the market who could be a backup to either player do you think he would come to Arsenal to sit on the bench?  They really are reaching to the bottom of the barrel with such notions.

But the thing that the Marinakis’ group of clubs has, which Arsenal does not have, is the possibility of bringing in players and moving them around different clubs to get experience before moving them finally into the Premier League – and all done without the risk of a player being snatched away for a club willing to pay a lot to the player now.

As it is with the Marinakis group players can move back and forth between Nottingham Forest, Olympiakos and Rio Ave – and quite probably there are other clubs on the horizon.

For Edu’s sake we can only hope that he realises that Forest are at the position they are in the league because they have played so few of the top clubs.  Last season after all they missed relegation by just one place and there’s no guarantee that as the fixtures begin to even themselves out, they could start to slide somewhat.

But good luck Edu – I hope works for you.   You’ve been a great member of the team until now, although I am sure that Mikel knows exactly who he wants to bring in to replace you.