Now Ayto will serve a period of gardening leave before leaving the club to pursue other opportunities.
When Edu was promoted to become Arsenal’s first Sporting Director in November 2022, he personally asked for Ayto, with whom he had been working closely, to be appointed as his Assistant.
Ayto subsequently played an important part in the overhaul of the club’s recruitment department in 2020, which led to several scouts being made redundant and in-house analytics company StatDNA coming more to the fore.
Ayto also became increasingly involved in transfer and contract negotiations.