Morning all. Hope you’re feeling marvellous. Or as marvellous as you can do on a Wednesday morning. Today I’ve been thinking about Unai Emery, as well as the divisive nature of the Arsenal fan base. But also, the hypocrisy of some of us, and there is severe levels of it.
This morning I had a look at my Twitter feed as I brushed my teeth, mindlessly flicking through to refresh the feed as the menthol taste permeated through my mouth, to see somebody had made a comment about Alexis Claude Maurice, who said he wanted to join Gladbach. The comment said something like “Emery’s done it again” and had been liked by a few people, those people who clearly have an issue with Emery and want to poke fun at him.
And if I’m honest it annoyed me. It annoyed me because there appears to be a collective of our fan base who, having derided the ‘lack of class’ shown by some fans for wanting Arsène Wenger to leave the club, they are showing the same level of intolerance as if it isn’t just as disrespectful.
I – like many of you I’m sure by the end – knew it was time for Arsène to move on, but probably only getting to that stage after he won the FA Cup and then decided to stay two years more, despite the fact that the decline in the team was starting to show. I would never have classed myself as a ‘WOB’ and if you know me you know I’m a normal fan, go to games, want Arsenal to win above anything, etc, etc.
And I still do. I consider myself a patient man too. I saw how poor we were the season before last and deep down I knew that getting us moving in an upward trajectory would take time. I was prepared for that. So when Emery came in I was ok with it. After all managers these days come and go and he had a complete rebuild on his hands. Changing a style and fabric of a club from top to bottom after a ‘one man show’ was always going to be difficult and I think Emery has made mistakes. He’s picked odd formations, he’s presided over a pretty pathetic end to the season culminating in that disgrace of a cup final, he’s over played players and as I suggested yesterday, he’s also not blooded as much youth as I think the club will have wanted.
Perhaps he isn’t a master tactician. Perhaps he isn’t the answer to all of Arsenal’s woes. But do I want him gone this summer? No. Will I be putting flippant remarks about how he’s a clown and doesn’t know what he’s doing? Of course not. Have I turned on him yet? Heck no.
That’s because I’m not a snap judgement football fan. I believe in giving Emery a shot and for me we see how he gets on next season. This is especially the case when you see what meagre budget we’re supposed to be working with this summer. How can you completely overhaul a team in a summer when you’re working with peanuts?
Let’s also not forget that Emery is the coach and it’s other people at the club that go out and get the players. Putting things on Emery at this stage – and by people who were such vehement supporters of the previous manager to the point of labelling our own fans as ‘disgraces’ for hounding him out – is a level of hypocrisy I just can’t abide with. People in glass houses and all that jazz.
So what happens if this season doesn’t work out? The club look for a new option. We got Emery on a two year deal and if it’s not going the way we want then so what? So we look to another direction, that’s what. That’s what modern football is and we need to accept that it is short termism, but that doesn’t mean we have to want to go the crazy and extreme levels you get at a farce of a club like Chelski. The Arsenal have always conducted themselves with a bit of decorum and I’d like to think we should be giving somebody a bit more of a shot that what some people have been doing. One season for a manager to impose his style is nothing. Especially when he’s following a legacy manager.
I also think we have bigger problems than who is the coach because there is a cloud over Arsenal that has been hanging for some time. That cloud is silent and American in nature. The Kroenke’s are dragging Arsenal towards mediocrity and anybody not spend the bulk of their ire and attention on a quite frankly appalling owner needs to rethink their priorities.
Just some thoughts on a random Wednesday for you.
Ha ain’t going nowhere mate
When Arsene finally left . We had two years where there probably at least a dozen managers if not more in the premier league that would not have done a worse job than him with what he had both player and money wise.
We get Emery . Was it a good signing a coach that cannot coach? How many managers would have done a better job than him last year?
His end of season collapse which could be the result of the way they had been trained throughout the year.was abysmal . The fact that he could not get the team to at least knock a draw here and there speaks volumes to his very very poor tactical ability.
The lack of faith in some players was a joke . And his team set up was generally stupid. he is a poor stop gap. We will be so far off the league again. That when he is sacked it will be difficult to get someone decent in.
How much time do you think Bruce Rioch was given?
Wenger was under serious scrutiny to prove himself from the get go.
I get that managers should be given time but at the same time football management has always been pressure.
In my view there has also been a willingness to sign off and approve anything Emery is doing as great and are not quick to point the mistakes he has made this season and he has made a few.
I am not a Emery fan at the moment as he has made a few decisions that have got me questioning his methods and philosophy – style of play,tactics, player issues (Ramsey,Ozil) (since when do we hang players out to dry like that) end of season collapse, Dennis Suarez etc.
I am not going to make banners or go on AFTV to express myself but my opinion is what it is. Emery can turn it around and i will be the first to put my hand up but he should not be given an easy ride because he is new.
i remember 1 game the away fans singing we got our Arsenal back after 3 games, that is a example of people giving him much praise for doing very little.
I think that’s fair. Hold him to account, but don’t go overboard after one season and actually, I think I’m in the same boat.
I think that’s a very fair assessment. Rioch did nothing wrong, it’s just Wenger decided that he was open to an offer. He’d been on the club’s radar since 1989 so the club didn’t want to miss out.
What troubles me about Emery is that he stopped playing his style of play. Perhaps this was influenced by the loss of Holding, but before Christmas I really thought he was getting the players to do what he wanted. But in the last third of season he seemed to move away from his preferred formation and looked disjointed again.
Why would you give Emery more time? He is a buffoon. He had Mesut Özil, Aaron Ramsey, Alexander Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. All he had to do was start those four men whenever they could walk, and watch them score the goals we needed to win. Instead, he put in his “system.” If those four guys don’t fit your system, you change your system.
And NOBODY knew it was time for Wenger to move on. It wasn’t. If he had managed this team, he would have finished 3rd with ease, and maybe taken enough points off Manchester City and Liverpool to make the title race interesting. The ONLY good reason for him to leave was so that he wouldn’t have to put up with this garbage anymore.
Arsenal are one man away from being trophy contenders again. Unfortunately, that man is the manager. #EmeryOut, before we actually do go into what the ungrateful pricks lied and said Wenger had brought us to: Midtable mediocrity.
You are entitled to your opinion Michael, but I fundamentally disagree on every level. The last season with Wenger was a team on the decline. The vast bulk of that team remains. The squad was imbalanced and that was down to Wenger’s building of it.
Always interesting to hear people suggest that Wenger shouldn’t have stepped down at all.
The one question I would ask them is – what explains the fact that, even a year later, no European club has hired him?
“The last season with Wenger was a team on the decline. The vast bulk of that team remains.”
Agreed, the last season was hard to watch but i still think he earned the right to see out his final year. And the Squad is unbalanced but i also believe that Wenger was trying to find space for the likes of AMN, Nelson, Willock, Nketiah, Iwobi Smith Rowe etc, who apart from AMN and Iwobi, all played more matches the season before.
I think that is one of the reasons the squad looks so umbalaced is Emery dropped nearly all the youth players that were on the verge of a breakthrough the season before.
They might all fail to make the grade but at least give them a go who knows we might have another Serge Gnabry on our hands.
Willock looked good the season before and made an impact in the Europa final, could he not have got more matches earlier in the season against weaker opp?
Did nelson and Smith Rowe have to go on loan when we were crying out for pace and creativity from wide areas?
Could Jordi Osei-Tutu have gotten games at right back this season ( i have not seen him play but there was talk in youth ranks that he was ready for a opp with the first team instead of Licthenstiner?
Maybe Emery deemed them not good enough but he did not utilise fully the resources available to him so you could there was your unbalance.
Biggest problem is the pathetic ownership which has dragged us down, shown no ambition and has no interest.
Also what an Opportunity as a coach to mold players the way you want them to play and embrace your philosophy than coaching and teaching youth player who are keen enthusiastic to learn, cant wait to prove themselves and will run for days on hype alone. Missed opportunity if you ask me.
Mate
It seems you are assumming the fan base that is calling Emery’s head are pro-wenger. Wrong! These are anti-wenger fans wanted the then Juventus manager as coach. You all need to stop blaming Wenger.
Arteta is the one we wronly let go. Unai has a communication bypass and will continue to struggle in EPL. Hopefully Freddie saves us one day. From one nil to the Arsenal to leaking 3, 4, 5, goals. Mind you, we stopped being Arsenal after David Dein. What a man!
I have to disagree to some extent, sure I don’t want to jump on the bandwagon of Emery out but there is no time for “decorum” anymore… What “decorum” is the club showing towards us at the minute?
I think at times this season he has looked like a fish out of water. I mean we signed a bulk of defensive players last year and often lined up with 6+ defensive players on the pitch and still somehow managed to look worse then in previous season’s. I get that he is trying to make us like tactical “Chameleons” but to me that just sounds like “I haven’t figured it out what I am trying to do l, so let’s try this” it may work sometimes, but it leads to games like Brighton and Huddersfield. Often at times we don’t even look like a fluid unit and this is one thing I can say we didn’t use to say under wenger. I really do want to get behind the guy and hope he changes my opinion, but he has done nothing at this point to show me that he is going to take us forward, not with promoting youth enough or with improving our away record – let’s not forget this guy went a whole season without winning an away game in the la Liga.
I mean I get the logic behind the choice, I really do, but I think we underplayed ourselves again something we have tended to do often in recent years. If we wanted to sure up our defence properly, we should have tempted Simeone away from athleti, it’s no secret that he has had an uneasy relationship with the board over the last few years and was ripped with chelski before they got Sarri – instead we got a coach who has never been known for his defensive prowess, and has bottled it on a number of occasion. You know what they say about mixing bottles with bottles…
Personally I agree with a comment above, if he fails at this project (which he currently isn’t) then we are going to be doomed when it comes to looking for an actual top manager to come!