Arsenal planning to promote Sven Mislintat to technical director as internal restructuring continues

The club is still adjusting to the departures of Arsene Wenger and Ivan Gazidis earlier this year and recently announced a new structure, with Raul Sanllehi as head of football and Vinai Venkatesham as managing director

Arsenal signed Sven Mislintat this time last year and he has grown in influence at the club ever since (Getty)

Arsenal are planning to promote Sven Mislintat to technical director after another round of internal restructuring.

The club is still adjusting to the departures of Arsene Wenger and Ivan Gazidis earlier this year and recently announced a new structure, with Raul Sanllehi as head of football and Vinai Venkatesham as managing director. Sanllehi told journalists last week this represented “a new chapter” for the club.

But Sanllehi is still reshaping the football side of Arsenal’s new-look operation, and is planning to create a new technical director role underneath him, one almost certain to be filled by current head of recruitment Mislintat.

Arsenal signed Mislintat this time last year and he has grown in influence at the club ever since. He drove the signings of former Borussia Dortmund players Pierre Emerick Aubameyang and Henrikh Mkhitaryan in the January 2018 transfer window before masterminding the summer recruitment following Wenger’s resignation.

Mislintat was behind the signings of Bernd Leno, Sokratis Papastathopoulus, Matteo Guendouzi, Lucas Torreira and Stephan Lichtsteiner.

Over the last year Mislintat and Sanllehi are understood to have developed a strong working relationship, and are seen by those in the game who work with them as major assets to Arsenal. This is why Sanllehi is keen to mark Mislintat’s growing influence with a bigger role.

By the time Mislintat left Dortmund last year his role had expanded beyond recruitment to oversee all football decisions, including style of play, the academy and coaching. The expectation in Germany has always been that Mislintat would eventually accrue as much power at Arsenal.

Meanwhile Huss Fahmy, the former city lawyer who Arsenal recruited from Team Sky to work on player contracts, is expected to step into Sanllehi’s old role as head of football operations.