Gary Neville claims “something doesn’t smell right” about Edu’s “insane” move from Arsenal to work under Evangelos Marinakis and wonders whether the club had to choose between the sporting director and manager Mikel Arteta.
Arsenal confirmed on Monday that Edu had handed in his resignation as the Gunners’ sporting director, bringing to end his five-year spell at the Emirates which started as the club’s technical director before a promotion in November 2022.
His decision to quit Arsenal came as a shock to everyone, including Arteta, who had built an excellent relationship with the Brazilian in the process of building a squad capable of challenging for the Premier League.
And Neville wonders if something has gone on behind the scenes to push him towards the exit.
“Something doesn’t smell right and you’re thinking, ‘If something doesn’t smell right and it doesn’t look right, it’s normally not right’,” ex-Manchester United right-back Neville said on The Overlap US.
“We haven’t got the detail, we don’t know what’s happening completely. We know that, obviously, he’s going to go and work for the owner of Nottingham Forest and Olympiacos.
“If I was Arsenal, you’d be asking serious questions how you’ve lost your sporting director of what is an amazing football club, a club that I’ve just said is the second club in England, in terms of history and tradition, to go and work for the guy who runs Olympiacos and Nottingham Forest.
“It doesn’t sound right to me. Now look, it might be a financial package which is just so sensational for Edu that basically he thinks: ‘Well actually, I can’t turn it down for my family’.
“But I can’t believe he’s not earning significant money at Arsenal.”
On rumours Edu has received an eye-watering offer that would triple his wage packet, Neville responded: “Well that’s insane.
“That may be the thing, it just may come down to money and it may come down to the fact that he feels he’s taken this Arsenal project as far as he can.
“If they do win the league this year he could probably say, ‘I set this up, I was the one who changed the fortunes of Arsenal, I was the one who built the squad with Arteta’, so he would still get some sort of credit for that.
“It’s not something that I think would sit right with Arsenal, it doesn’t sit right with us. It doesn’t look right, it looks like something… to be fair, has something gone wrong? Is there a difference of opinion?
“Is there a question mark between the manager and the sporting director as to tactics, the way in which they play, the way in which we go, not using the squad right? Has that conversation happened and they’ve had to choose one of them? That sometimes happens with sporting directors and managers.
“None of these may be true but what it does when you see something as startling as this, it opens the door for these types of questions to be asked and these types of rumours to occur and I have to say, for Arsenal, it’s not good.”
Neville was then asked if he believes Edu’s departure has the potential to further destabilise the club amid a tricky period on the pitch.
“It has the potential, of course, because we don’t know how important Edu was,” Neville continued.
“I believe Mikel Arteta has got enough about him, he’s got enough stability. We’re not on his back for what’s happening in these first few weeks of the season, we think he’s done a good job, we think he’s made progression over these last few years.
