On the final day of the 2007 season, Jose Mourinho strode up to the podium to accept his winners medal for the FA Cup. Instead of a moment of grace, Jose turned to Roman Abramovich and held up six fingers. One for each trophy he won during his first tenure at Chelsea. Yes, he does count the Charity Shield. He would leave Chelsea in September.
A few years later, back again with Chelsea, he held up eight fingers when they won the League. He was fired in December of that year.
Upon his return to Chelsea, now as a manager of Man U, he held up three fingers to the fans who were abusing him.
When Man U won the Europa League, again he was given an opportunity to simply win a trophy with elan, just take it all in and once again he saw an opportunity to brag about how many trophies he’s won. This time he got the players to raise their hands with three fingers:
And yesterday, during a meltdown at his post-match press conference, Jose Mourinho again raised three fingers.. this time saying that he’s won the Premier League more times than all the other 19 managers in the League.
Jose Mourinho is an insecure little man who has to take all of the credit for any accomplishments that he’s part of. It’s not his players who win these trophies, it’s him, the Special One.
But it looks like his time is almost up. Once he starts waving around his fingers teams usually get tired of him. The only question left with Jose is who will hire him after all of this? It would take a tremendous fool to give this man another team. After all, he’s just going to stick his fingers up at the first sign of stress. At the owners, the fans, the players, and the press.
No! Please no! He can’t leave soon. It’s so much fun to watch the drama unfold. Praying he lasts the entire season. January minimum.
Man, he’s been waiting 4 years to be able to say that. Four years! Now that Wenger’s finally gone, he can say that. What a joker.
Mourinho is a manager for a different age. Of course he’s get another job, but not with a top team. No Premier League challenger will take him now. Spain is done with him – Italy too probably (certainly not Juve). I highly doubt he’d go to Bayern anytime soon, and PSG have a good young manager.
Either he drops down a tier – which he wouldn’t accept in any major league, because that nullifies what he’s good at – or he starts looking at other one or two team leagues. Scotland? Greece? Maybe back to Portugal?
Either way, I think we’ll be finally done with this earsore soon. Which is too bad, frankly, because I want him to do as much damage to Utd as possible before the kick his arse to the curb.
Mourinho and ManU were a perfect fit, snobs who buy their way to success (Sorry I’m comparing Wenger’s first decade battles with ManU).
I think the next perfect fit for Mourinho is the Spuds – both very annoying.
Either way, I think we’ll be finally done with this earsore soon. Which is too bad, frankly, because I want him to do as much damage to Utd as possible before they kick his arse to the curb.
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I’d happily put up with this earsore if it meant damaging United’s hopes for the top four this season. In fact, he’s only annoying when he’s winning things. Watching him unravel in the wake of disappointment is just one of the pure and decent pleasures in life.
[reply to Zed]
Seconded. Just imagine (as I did, for several weeks) how lovely it would’ve been if he’d managed to get Chelsea relegated that one season.
Pure and decent pleasures – love it! Couldn’t agree more!
I would imagine that United will soon be flipping him one, which will play right into his hands for the severance package he’ll get. And then he’ll go through it all over again with some other PL team.
I also hope ManU hangs on to him for the whole season. It’s hilarious to watch him unravel and take down a club with him. I was really upset when Chelsea finally sacked him. Let’s hope United do the right thing for the entertainment of us all, and hang onto him and let him destroy their club. They were so stupid to hire him in the first place and deserve everything coming to them.
Jose’s become a parody of himself. And his team, United, plays sh1t ball. I watched the whole game yesterday. Emery is getting grief from a section of our brainless support for playing it out from the back (Yankee Gunner’s podcast had a very good discussion on the stupid reaction from a section of the fans to this)… but de Gea kicked nearly everything long, and I estimate that United had about a 30% retention rate from that, if that much. It’s prehistoric football. Let’s stick with Emery. Give him time. Trust me, we don’t want to be playing Jose ball.
He bought (expensively) players he no longer wants or trusts after a season. He changed his CB pairing. He made 6 changes. Martial did not make his squad of 18. Woodward (correctly) told him no, we’re not buying Maguire for 70m. He has lost it.
And yet, his record speaks for itself. So yeah, I excuse him for holding up those fingers. It’s something he has to show, as his coaching career takes a downward spiral. And yes, while we mock him, let’s remember that he won the title more recently than we did, and our record against him is abysmal.
He has a great group of footballers there… a squad that is significantly better than ours. Coaches would kill to work with forward line of Lukaku, Rashford, Sanchez and Martial.
Fred looks a good footballer (if too bad-tempered for his own good), and Matic, yesterday and whenever I’ve seen him, looks the calm, assured presence that we hoped Xhaka would be. Fellaini, as he showed in Russia, is a better player than he is given credit for.
It’s his centre back line that sucks. Shaw and Valencia are decent players.
The problem is the the coach. He should be getting more out of that squad.
Can I say for the record that I’m tired to my core with people criticizing other fans for their opinion and calling them “braindead” or “idiots”. There seems to be a sort of haughty moralizing coming from the people who spent the last three years calling for Wenger to be sacked after every match toward any fan who dares to criticize Emery right now. People have every right to be upset about these results. Other coaches have come in and gotten their teams turned around right away so I don’t think it’s brainless to expect more from Emery. Emery himself has made changes at half-time in each of these matches, prof that he got things very wrong. There are people who are “Emery out” already but I have literally only seen that once. So, building up this straw man to thrash about the “stupid” masses who don’t understand football and need to listen to the podders from on high is a bit sanctimonious.
Who are these other coaches, particularly after a succession like ours? It’s one thing to come into a club that’s had one manager for a year or two, but 22? That doesn’t happen very often. I would be interested to see the numbers, as always, but my sense is that the longer the previous tenure, the longer it takes for the new regime to take hold. I know we haven’t looked great but it’s also only three games. The stupid masses of fans who don’t understand football is actually, realistically, most of them. If that wasn’t true tabloids would never sell, ITK accounts wouldn’t be the most followed on twitter, and bad ideas, overreactions and sleazy gossip wouldn’t spread like wildfire.
The bigger issue though is why should all fans, a very broad group indeed, be immune from criticism for their opinions? Claude is not revoking their right to an opinion, but he is casting judgment over it. I think we can all agree that some opinions are over the line. Where you draw that line is up to each one of us to determine for ourselves. Doesn’t he have as much right to do that as those fans have to their opinion in the first place? Some opinions are clearly more thoughtful and organized than others, so they are not created equal. I understand the sentiment of hating to see someone put down to a point, but calling Claude haughty and moralizing seems to me just a different flavor of exactly your complaint. These things have rough edges and lots of grey zones but that’s how I see it.
I would just appreciate it if people are who are critical of Emery’s work so far put it squarely in the context it deserves, but that doesn’t happen very often. It does in the podcasts I listen to, and, mostly, in the blogs I read, but there is a large portion of pundits and fans out there making statements without qualification.
So then the question becomes, why without qualification? Even if it’s an non-malicious omission, it’s one that does indeed sound simplistic because, for one, it doesn’t address the ‘why’ issue. Why is Emery getting it wrong at this particular time, at this particular stage of his tenure, with this particular squad? And if you answer that, the criticism, grounded in evidence as it is, takes on a different light.
Sometimes (and I would suggest this is one of those times) the fullest consideration of context is also an act of grace; that lack of consideration is, rightly or wrongly, but certainly not unjustifiably, perceived as rash judgment and simplistic harping. I believe it is unfair to compare these Arsenal podcasters (and, indirectly, Claude) — particularly those who gave Wenger a grace period for the best part of a decade while waiting for him to turn things around — with people implicitly or even at times explicitly questioning whether Emery was the right choice for Arsenal (or even a good manager, generally) after a total of three league games.
Also, I side with Doc when he addresses your comment with this: “I understand the sentiment of hating to see someone put down to a point, but calling Claude haughty and moralizing seems to me just a different flavor of exactly your complaint.”
“I would just appreciate it if people are who are critical of Emery’s work so far put it squarely in the context it deserves, but that doesn’t happen very often. It does in the podcasts I listen to, and, mostly, in the blogs I read, but there is a large portion of pundits and fans out there making statements without qualification.”
Can you show me one of these? Maybe I’m just too isolated but I have yet to read a criticism that doesn’t even remotely contextualize Emery and Arsenal.
“I understand the sentiment of hating to see someone put down to a point, but calling Claude haughty and moralizing seems to me just a different flavor of exactly your complaint.”
I was waiting for the “you’re sanctimonious about my sanctimony” bit. No, I’m not. I’m expressing deep weariness with Arsenal supporters constantly casting themselves as morally superior. Whether that’s because they attend games, because they have been a fan for 26 years, because they were born there, or because they “are giving Emery a chance”. It’s just more of the same stuff that we see year in and year out with Arsenal. I see it all the time; people say that “i’ve seen so many people say ____ and they are dumb!” and on the surface it seems like a pretty ok and smart comment but I almost never see the thing happening that they are grandstanding about.
For example, the decontextualized Unai Out guy: I saw that once and honestly don’t even believe he was a real person and not just a bot or a rival fan trying to make Arsenal look bad. Maybe those people do exist, but I’d really like to see this phenomenon and to see what these people are actually saying, before I just throw out blanket statements about people being brain dead.
I don’t have to reach far. I would point to your comment as an example of unqualified criticism:
“Other coaches have come in and gotten their teams turned around right away so I don’t think it’s brainless to expect more from Emery. Emery himself has made changes at half-time in each of these matches, proof that he got things very wrong.”
Yes, aaaaaannnndddd? That’s it? I’ve gotten the sense from some of your posts in the last couple of weeks that you’ve not included the context I describe (as “deserved”). I may be wrong, and I was certainly wrong to write an acerbic response to one of those posts last week, especially given the context (ha!) of all the great stuff you write, and the great community of readers and responders you’ve managed to attract/gather here. Context (sometimes) = grace.
And, to respond directly to the quoted material above: Klopp and Guardiola are two wonderful, recent examples of coaches we now consider good, but who didn’t have an immediate impact on results. What they worked on was getting their squad playing in the system they wanted (that was the “immediate impact,” and no different from the impact we’re seeing at Arsenal now), but they didn’t really see the results until after a year or more. Klopp’s work, now three years in the making, and after a couple of 4th-placed finishes, could see them challenge for the title this year.
Regardless, I’m not sure it’s a good argument. Yes, “other” coaches had an immediate impact. “Other” coaches didn’t. Those two statements don’t tell us anything right now about whether or not Emery is doing good work.
As Francis Bacon once said: “Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.” Right now, at this stage, any dismissal of Emery’s abilities feels terribly premature, and, unfortunately, it does read as “dismissal” when criticism appears without the deserved context. By “deserved,” I mean appropriate to three games into a season, two months into a system, and with players who are mostly part of or used to a different system, with the added knowledge that not all managers, even the best, bring immediate impact results-wise in the first phase of their regime.
We live a world where hyperbole is commonplace and everyone is claiming moral high ground. It’s noble that you’re looking to verify someone’s actual stance in nuanced context prior to reacting, but it might leave you feeling stretched a bit thin to have to care about validating so many opinions from so many places. Keeping up with that would exhaust anyone. Maybe that’s the fatigue you referenced earlier.
If youre going to oooh and ahh about every pass Cech makes to Mustafi or Monreal, and engage in sarcastic applause when he kicks it long, yeah, I’m going to call you brain dead. Yo are telegraphing pure negativity to the players, in a place they should be calling home.
This is not a go at people who criticise Emery. He’s correctly had some, including from me.
What Im saying, Tim, to be clear, is that the point got lost. Perhaps I did not express it clearly. The specific example is fans cheering punts, and groaning at back passes… not criticism of the manager. Fans always “kick every ball”… that wont change. But I cant see how this helps the atmosphere, or the players.
Here’s a funny fact: in my living room I cheered and laughed when Cech started kicking it long, because the whole thing was absurd and I guess that’s how I process absurd things, through humor. I guess I’m one of the brain dead.
Dude, it’s not braindead to do that in your living room. However, if you’re doing that live, and collectively so that it registers with the player, I think it’s stupid…insofar as you want your team to succeed and feel comfortable adjusting to new systems (while at the same time needing, at times, to revert to habit out of comfort or desperation while you and your teammates transition). If you don’t give a sh*t about Cech’s decision-making in real time (or even post-game time…you read his response to Leverkusen’s teasing about this, I assume, which suggests that the ironic cheering was not welcome in game time), then it’s just bantz to you (not “you” as in Tim, but to those who made the jeers in the stadium). But it’s demoralizing to the player and their confidence. Let’s let these players have the space and time to get used to the transition, instead of, in this case, teasing Cech for doing what was probably required given the circumstances and players at his disposal. That, to me, was Claude’s point.
Exactly. I don’t see the point of turning your home ground into a hostile environment. That’s it.
And I don’t see putting forward that POV as acting morally superior. Ive always said that there’s no one way to to support the team, and the gooner fanbase is now global. That why we went to Singapore in pre-season.
Look, one could argue that a solid section of the gooner fandom calling a certain patois speaking Jamaican/Brit posse moronic, does so from a position of moral superiority. Because in doing so, they mock everything about AFTV– their speech, their opinions, their attempts to big up themselves on social media, their temerity to want to monetise what they do. Even if their opinions and conclusions are identical to Arseblog’s or 7amkickoff’s
Still, I wouldnt call it that. I simply think that it’s possible to have different views of these things.
Well, and Claude, it’s worth mentioning that the podcast you referenced (ArsenalVision, but it would apply equally to the opinions expressed in the recent Arseblog podcasts) are not unequivocally supportive. However, they couch their criticism of Emery’s decisions in terms of a myriad of factors, including the players at his disposal and the length of his tenure. In other words, most of us don’t need cheerleading, but there’s been so much negativity around the club for so long that I’d like a little more circumspection when it comes to the new era…three weeks in.
What I would want is that Emery doesn’t behave anything like Mourinho and start bragging about his success in the last 5 years should times get tougher for us, clinging on it and demanding the media respect him and his achievements.
Additionally, how can Emery get the media on board like Klopp and Poch? It already seems apparent 3 games in that he is getting a lot more criticism than the other two ever have. and the failure of Klopp and Poch to deliver tangible success in terms of trophies in the last 3 years has not been given the focus it should do because they are supposedly building dynasties. Would Emery get away so lightly if we finished 8th like Liverpool did in Klopp’s first season or if we blew 2nd place like Poch did in 2016 on the last day at Newcastle? Or even Poch’s Spurs wilting away in two FA Cup semi finals in a row?
Negativity sells ad revenue and comments from irate fans who are upset above the perceived bias. In other words, it won’t change ever.
Even during Wengers golden years, there was a lot of negativity.
I think we have to play much better football for the media to get on board with Emery the way that they have with Tottenham, Chelsea, Leeds, and Liverpool. It’s not always about winning things. Improving the team would be a good start. So far, that’s a pretty tough sell.
Context is everything.
The Reds were 10th when Rodgers got sacked. So yeah, finishing 8th was an improvement. Also, Liverpool reached the finals of the League Cup and Europa League in Klopp’s first season. Not bad. In fact, Klopp had every excuse for his first season at Liverpool because he arrived only in October and wasn’t familiar with the squad, plus the summer transfer market was closed, while Emery joined Arsenal in May and had plenty of time to prepare his squad and could make some signings.
Same thing with Pochettino. Context!
Before his appointment, Spurs finished in the Top 4 of the Premier League only twice. Now under Poch, Spurs have finished in the Top 4 three seasons in a row. That’s a massive improvement. They probably won’t contend in the next few years, because of the cost of their stadium and their limited budget for transfers, but their fans would be happy if they can qualify for the Champions League every season like the pre-2017 Arsenal.
For this season, I only want Emery to finish in the Top 6. I don’t expect Arsenal to be in the Top 4. In fact, I don’t even expect Emery to fix the club’s defensive issues this season because the summer transfers were not good enough. The real test for him and the board will be next summer. Can they buy quality centerbacks? Liverpool (Van Dijk) and City (Laporte) spent a fortune but they got quality, while Arsenal spent average fees for average players (Paulista, Chambers, Mustafi, Sokratis). If Arsenal can find quality for an average fee like Koscielny, fair enough.
I know it’s splitting hairs but Liverpool were 9th in the tables when decision was made to let Rodgers go and even before that the rumors about him being replaced by Klopp were being spread around, so the results leading up to their loss to Everton and before need to be put in, as you said, context.
In the league cup final Liverpool lost to Man City and got there by beating Southampton, Exeter and Stoke. Hardly a tough draw so cite this as some sort of accomplishment rings pretty hollow.
Finishing on 60 points in the PL wasn’t some great achievement either, although he did only have less than the full season to work with.
Europa league was where the biggest promise was shown by beating United, Dortmund and Villarreal on their way to the final.
For the sake of accuracy, let’s get the record straight.
Liverpool drew at Everton on Sunday, Oct. 4, 2015, and Rodgers got sacked after the game. Klopp only got appointed on Oct. 8.
If you check on the Premier League’s official website, the Reds were definitely 10th at the end of Matchweek 8, when all the PL sides played 8 games. Liverpool were indeed 9th when Swansea vs. Spurs and Arsenal vs. Manchester United were not finished yet, but it would be a dishonest picture to ignore the results of the last 2 games of Matchweek 8 to claim the Reds were 9th. And anyway it doesn’t change my point: 8th is still better than 9th or 10th.
I never said reaching the League Cup final was some sort of accomplishment. I said “not bad”. And when you compare with Rodgers, Klopp did much better in both the League Cup and the Europa League. Liverpool’s best result in those competitions under Rodgers’ tenure was reaching the League Cup semifinals and the Europa League round of 32.
Again context, mate 😉
I didn’t watch the United game, but perhaps Claude (or another) could enlighten me: how much of the result was down to United’s poor play, and how much to Tottenham’s good play? I know it’s usually a bit of both, but would be curious, because…well, I may have been wrong in my predictions for Tottenham this season.
I had Spurs finishing 4th or 5th, but always with the sense that they’d be our closest rival for those two spots. I based that prediction on nothing more than a) the fact they did nothing in the transfer window (so might stagnate), and b) the desperate hope that their stars would come back late, tired, and then take forever to regain form.
Of course, both are just assumptions. a) What did they really need in their squad? Did they need additions? Probably not. It’s already an excellent, hardworking squad, and replace ‘stagnation’ with ‘continuity’. b) I was spectacularly wrong in predicting how slowly World Cup players would return to their squads. City, Liverpool, and Tottenham have had a good starts to the season.
I think the only reason some people got on Tottenham’s back about their lack of transfer activity is because they felt with a few key additions, they could become true title contenders. But they’ve basically turned into a second-decade-Wenger team: Get the team in the top four on a regular basis, make up the numbers in the CL, and all on a minimal budget, fully accepting that the money required to be a true title contender was never going to be available.
Also, back to the topic on hand, if you haven’t had a chance to see the latest Squires cartoon over at the Guardian, it’s well worth it (Mourinho’s been featured as an emo teenager for the last few weeks, which explains the look, and Sir Chips and Wenger make excellent cameos):
https://www.theguardian.com/football/ng-interactive/2018/aug/28/david-squires-on-respect-cheeky-chips-and-premier-league-irony
Bun,
United could and perhaps should have been 2-nil up at half-time. They had more territorial possession than Spurs, and more of the game. Lukaku missed a very good chance after rounding Lloris and hitting from an acute angle. United looked the better team. Even their maligned central defenders were playing well, Matic ran everything in the middle of the park, Fred was causing problems, and Ander Herrera was playing the Mhiki role (shielding Valancia when he got forward) very effectively.
But the good coaches make their money at halftime, and Poch adjusted. Im not the best person to run you though the tactics, but Moura in particular, started to run at them from midfield with more purpose. Kane goal, United nearly replied, and then Moura killed them off.
As I said earlier, punts and long kicks are low percentage things, and Mourinho’s long ball game starting with de Gea became increasingly less effective against a well-coached team like Spurs. United looked agricultural, in a way that should concern their fans. The game was ugly, resembling pinball for long stretches. And when Poch adjusted, Mourinho didn’t have an answer. Even clever ballplayers like Sanchez and Pogba looked lost. Mourinho’s stock tactical change is Fellaini.
He’s got that team playing at less than the sum of its parts. As for Spurs, they should be very afraid of an injury to Kane or Eriksen. Theyre thinner than the look, although Moura is a really good signing, especially for his price. And their coach is a boss.
Cheers. Thanks, Claude.
i loved jose’s reaction.
One of the things that concerns me about Emery is that he hasn’t tried to evolve the team over time into playing the way that he wants – when AW first arrived he didn’t throw out the established back four but he did try to get them to tweak the way they played their football while he worked on adapting the team’s style of football (and adding PV4, Petit, Grimandi). While I accept that Emery has been handicapped by the purchases of Xhaka and Mustafi (neither of whom were purchased by AW IMHO) he has to find a way of stopping so many goal scoring opportunities being conceded to the opposition – with the players he has; his apparent refusal to adapt elements of his system to deal with this weakness does not bode well for the season.
I’ve not been impressed with Emery todate. All that post appointment spiel was that he would get the defence organised. Haven’t seen anything close to better organisation. Now, its he needs more time to undo the Wenger years. These are professional footballers and talented ones at that. I did not expect to see Arsenal doing worse than before. We were pretty darn unimpressive against West Ham despite the scoreline. I’m sure he’ll get at least the season but if this season is worse than the last, I am going to think he is not the man for the job, braindead fan label or not.
Well, according to that logic, you’d have fired Klopp after his first season at Liverpool, and Guardiola after his first season at Man City. Do you think they should have been fired after their first season? Why or why not?
I think Pep and Klopp are one level above Emery.
Having said that, I’m inclined to reserve my judgment on him until the end of the season.
I don’t think he should be judged based on league position or trophies but rather whether his system is showing signs of bearing some fruit in seasons two and three.
If you predicted Arsenal making top four, as many have done this season, then by the virtue of these predictions ( based on what I have no idea) you will need to be critical of Emery’s job because admitting to making $hitty predictions isn’t something anyone likes doing, myself included.
As an aside, when Pep’s City we’re trying to play out the back in his first season and in the process turned the ball over and conceded some cheap goals, some of the leading pundits said his style would fail in the PL and it was down right disrespectful to British football.
Well said, Tom.
I would also put Pochettino in that category (of managers we now admire, but who had a rough first season…Tottenham were sketchy when they were first trying to implement his system).
And while Pep was making them play out the back, he had $$ and guts to try 2 goalkeepers.
I wonder if Emery could emulate it at Arsenal – if current players not working at the position, get the board to bring in another top guy spending as much as those clubs could.
Problem at Arsenal in recent years has been doing some poor signings at cheaper in one Summer, then coming out all guns to buy top player when things don’t work as reaction.
IMO Emery won’t ever get nod to spend for players that will be automatic starters, will have to try and work with players brought in by Sven.
Watching at Leno – Chech situation makes that clear.
Pools, Chel$ea start the season with new GK , while we bed in Leno? Don’t think so.
needed a top CB, but Sokratis starts because honestly Lolo is down.
The same mistakes in Transfer window have been repeated or this has been strategy of KSE all along.
No manager will succeed in these circumstances and all big Weng was doing defending KSE for the love of the club and some million quids. He was accused of trying to figure a player to a position after buying him, but it could have always been from KSE ,I give you these , see what you could do.
Don’t expect Emery at Arsenal succeed to imbibe the playing styles as Pep, Klopp did because he won’t get the players to do it.
I have been surprised by Pools owner, they have started believing and rolling out money to get the spine Klopp wanted.
City with Pep was expected to do it, but I thought Klopp would be just keeping brand value with money thrown into every alternate window, but they have brought in top guy at every opportunity also building top back ups like Chambo.
This is the approach needed in transfers.
If it came to pass that Emery has a disastrous first season and gets the sack next summer and KSE hires Mourinho would you still actively support the Arsenal or take a hiatus for his (now all but guaranteed) 3 year tenure?
Sick to your stomach by just the thought of it? Me too. An unlikely scenario to many (most) perhaps but not at all out of the realm of possibility.
My football conclusions relating to Arsenal are not always driven by logic but to answer your question, given Klopp’s and Pep’s reputation and record, I would not have sacked them after season 1. If Emery delivers a lower position with no Cup runs, yes, I would seriously consider letting him go.
Ok. So that means, if I take you at your word, that the only way you’d demand Emery’s resignation is if he finished lower than 8th, which is where Klopp finished in his first season. Except maybe he’d be given even more grace, since you suggest that expectations follow reputation, and most pundits consider Emery a failure for not winning the Champions League.
Honestly, it hurts the brain sometimes.
Have at it, but try, please try, to have some perspective, yeah?
Lol…you did spend a lot of time on what I said. Probably more than I did given its just a football opinion. So far I do not like what I see. If things change, so might my position. If I still don’t like how things are, I won’t be flying banners but neither will I feel that I am obliged not to want the manager changed just because its only been 1 season. Cheers till the end of the season
That makes sense. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
greg made a very interesting point on the previous thread. well, it’s interesting to me because i had the same thought after the chelsea game. essentially, he’s suggested the possibility that emery is more focused on his strategic approach than getting the best out of the available talent. the way ozil was forced to play in the chelsea game is a waste of his talents and is not sustainable.
last week, i posted a suggestion but it may have been overlooked as tim put up a new thread almost as soon as i posted. the idea was to change the formation to get the most out of arsenal’s best players. i suggested a 1-4-3-1-2. you have the solidity of your back four and a three-man central midfield that features aaron ramsey. you also have ozil between the midfield and the two strikers, which gets the best from him and minimizes his defensive duties. you pair lacazette and aubameyang as your front two strikers who employ the same approach as any 2-striker set up that they learned when they were kids. i think that’s the best approach but i’m not the one who gets fired if they get it wrong. we’ll see how it all works out.
understand, i really love a front three and the 1-4-3-3 is my preferred setup. however, considering the talent arsenal have, particularly the unique qualities of mesut, i would deviate. i believe the 1-4-3-1-2 maximizes the talents of all of arsenal’s best players.
…had to fire the mac back up before leaving to make another point. the 1-3-5-2 could suit arsenal. i thing it’s universally agreed that both sead and hector are better wing backs than fullbacks. however, arsenal have sent chambers on loan and have sold gabriel, who i believed was one of arsenal’s best players when arsenal moved to a back 3.
another observation, who’s running the arsenal midfield? xhaka can’t and ramsey won’t. i believe that if arsenal had offered cazorla another year, he would have loved to remain at arsenal. considering his age and how much recent time he’s been out, i’m sure he wouldn’t mind the reduced minutes and a reduced pay package. but to have that man’s brilliance on the training pitch every day as well as his mentorship to guendouzi and torreira could have helped create a winning situation at arsenal. perhaps arsenal could have created a “95 ajax situation where they had guendouzi filling the edgar davids role with cazorla doing the rijkaard business. the fact that cazorla’s spanish could have helped emery as well.
We went through a recruitment process, looked at some good coaches, and hired Unai Emery. Who has a track record of successful coaching. Any notion of removing him after a year is nuts and self-defeatingly short-termist.
Gary Neville, in a fierce debate with Jamie Carragher, made a really great point about who adapts to whom. As a coach the players adapt to YOUR system. Period. The minute you say, “no it won’t be this way after all”, based on an attempt to adapt to the players you have, you lose their respect, and the dressing room. It’s going to be painful for some. If they dont adapt, they go. Like Joe Hart, then Englan’d No 1 goalkeeper, at City.
Emery has to bend the team to HIS will, and it’s going to take him time and a few transfer windows. Arsene over time assembled a team of not-that-good players on astronomical wages. He prepared us for mid-table residence. Emery has a hard time improving on that. But even if that is not the case, he’s been in charge for 3 competitive games, for Pete’s sake.
That’s not to say he’s above criticism. Chelsea telegraphed in our friendly in Dublin SEVERAL TIMES how easy it was to break our high press. And in the game? Bang. Easy peasy. I said at the time that getting caught out like that was a coaching fail.
I’m beginning to doubt whether some of the folks who wanted Arteta would have shown him the necessary patience.
Claude, I mostly agree but I don’t think it’s as simple as “players adapt to your system, period.” It depends on what “your system” amounts to.
Playing out from the back is done by almost every truly elite team on the planet now. Like the high press, it’s the tactics of the present, and perhaps the future. It would be foolish for Emery to adopt Allardyce-ball in his first game of a new era, when he’s trying to get everyone at the club to buy into his longterm vision of high-intensity possession football, which he hopes will see us challenging for the title some day. It would also be foolish to put Emery’s job under pressure in this first season, or to expect his vision to completely bear fruit before he’s had a few more transfer windows to change the squad somewhat. These, I take it, were Neville’s best points.
However, I don’t think what, e.g., Josh is saying above (I take it you weren’t directly responding to Josh?) amounts to forcing Emery to totally change his style/tactics to a brand of football he doesn’t believe in, just to indulge our current squad. E.g. switching to a midfield diamond to play to the strengths of our squad–getting both Laca and Auba on the pitch, getting Ozil and Rambo in their best positions, etc–or a back three, or whatever, is just good commonsensical flexibility. I wouldn’t personally switch to a back three, and probably wouldn’t do a diamond over a 4-3-3, at least in most matches, but my point is Emery should be open to it. If he’s stubbornly stuck on playing a 4-2-3-1, when that arguably may not get the best out of our, considerably talented, attacking players (not arguing one way or the other on that issue right here), then that seems like a fair thing to criticize.
This squad with those tactics delivered 5th and 6th in successive years. It was a team going backwards. There’s no gain in “playing to their strengths.” The definition of insanity and all that… What’s the point of doing things tactically similarly (or near-similarly)? They either adapt to the methods that he thinks will reverse the slide, or they don’t.
There are players who are giving him what he wants, simply not enough of them. What about them, those who got the memo? Again, this is not to say that Emery hasnt made mistakes, or is above criticism. He has, and he is. But he’s got to see his vision and methods through, painful as the adjustment will be for some.
There are also extraneous circumstances not of his making. Ramsey. He doesn’t know if one of his most senior squad members and influential players in the field is staying or going, and that messes with his long term planning. Some players were brought in before he was hired. And on and on.
(No, I wasnt responding to Josh)
Claude makes good points but that wasn’t quite what I was trying to say. I think it goes beyond formations or whether or not there is a system that players should or shouldn’t follow. Of course there is always a system and players should always follow it. Wenger had one and Emery has one.
The issue is how you arrive at your system, and then how you impose it. Emery strikes me as a bit of a managerialist. The system is mechanistic. Wenger’s was fluid.
But this is a complex subject, it’s late, I’m nostalgic, I’m typing on a phone and I’m probably wrong anyway.
And I while I stand by my critique of Emery, as vague as it is, I certainly think it can get results if we give it time, it may even turn out to be awesome. No harm in airing early observations, even if they contain doubts.
Heard we are going after yaya toure..dunno how true that is..it’d be a great addition to the squad
Olympiakos. Apparently, though, he was shopped around to pretty much every top six PL club!
Why olympiakos? He would have made a good teacher for guendouzi..
Ummm… I don’t think it’s olympiakos bun.. check this out
https://amp.calciomercato.com/news/yaya-toure-completes-arsenal-medical-transfer-imminent-93228
And he’s agreed to join olympiakos.. nice try by the media..
yaya played at olympiacos when his move to arsenal broke failed.