Andrea Berta

And I think we saw the results of that in the summer for some Arsenal fans right now.

Andrea Berta is a weakness.

Is he a weakness because he actually convinced the club to buy your careers over Sesco? Are we going to go back that far? Is he a weakness because he failed for some of you in the summer transfer window? Are we going to forget the players that he actually brought in last summer? that helped us win a title.

And you could argue that for some of you, the weak spot right now was actually the strong spot who got goals against teams we dropped points against and helped propel us to a title.

I've never been Victor Jokeres' biggest fan.

We know he's an Andrea Berta signing.

We know the club were really big on Sesko.

That was who they wanted to bring in.

It was a last-minute thing.

Andrea Berta had relationships in place with the people around Jokeres, I believe.

And that was his preference.

It was not what the analytics suggested we should be doing.

...

Andrea Berta or anything like that, 'cause I just don't know enough about what they do to say with absolute clarity, "Yes, this person's a problem and they're performing badly at their job." So I j- I just...

Un- unless it's like re- like, like when the men's side had Raul Sanllehi, I was, I was quite clear that he wasn't making decisions that I thought were in the interests of the club.

But other, other than that, I just don't know.

He's clearly ambitious, got time to have some success at club level.

Yes, it's a great signing and Arteta and Andrea Berta should be applauded for making it happen.

Yeah, they've added a lot of depth to Arsenal's squad this season.

And I mean, they're going to need it.

So I don't know how serious that was.

On that level, there's mixed views on Andrea Berta 18 months into the job.

The...

The sort of perception was that he did a good job in the summer of 2025, if only because we did win the league consequently and went as far as we did in Europe.

I think he often doesn't, isn't spotted or like, you know, also isn't trusted.

But I think that comes back to the Andrea Berta thing at Arsenal, which is that I think Arsenal generally were quite set on Sesco and Andrea Berta had relationships around Jokeres and a preference for Jokeres and we signed him, which doesn't quite tally.

Can I flip the script and ask you, Scarlett, why? Genuine question and I'm not shithousing here because it's more about where Jokeres' career goes now after Arsenal because it's clear he's probably not going to be at Arsenal beyond this season.

Out of the big six, where does he go and does he start? I think Victor Jokeres belongs in the big six in the Premier League because I don't think, I mean, maybe Chelsea.

So they'd have been aware.

Maybe they wanted that specific sit-down to explain and to discuss, and I don't know if Mikel should be doing that or if Andrea Berta should be doing that as a sporting director.

I don't know.

I think reading between the lines, it feels like maybe those conversations happened with the club's hierarchy rather than the manager.