At the end of next season we may look back at this one fondly

151 comments

1. Keep Monreal, Bellerin, Holding, Mavropanos, Lacazette, Aubameyang, AMN, Torreira, Leno, Iwobi and replace the rest. How is that for a catharsis?

   1. Aubameyang and Lacazette are assets at peak valuation right now. Their value will diminish as the team starts to diminish. We’re already out of the hunt for top 4 next season with only a 40m transfer budget.

      I’d argue this summer is the time to sell both for maximum ROI, however I have no faith in the current regime to invest the returns wisely.

      1. Right on, Jack. We have to get something while we can. Let’s just face up to the fact we’re rebuilding. Let’s do it before Auba sours on the club, and he and Laca have less productive years. go with young, athletic players who can pass and press. I would prefer to see Auba go – we will get more $ and he is older. Time to be ruthless and recognize the enormity of the task ahead.

         1. I think every professional footballer, playing in the EPL is able to pass and press. The problem with that though, is that they both need high levels if fitness, coordination and tactical intelligence from the players.

            We have fitness, as shown by our running stats and tactical inteligence as well. We are just not being coached to do it well enough for a club of our size.

            So this isn’t like FIFA where signing better players and picking a formation are all that a manager does.

   2. I can’t see Arsenal spending £300m this summer.

2. Having arteta as a head coach doesn’t seem like a bad idea now. Blind mice, the board.

3. I’ve thought for a while this season was the “peak” or rather, the final inflection point on the graph where the team now demonstrably starts a trend downwards.

   We’re the new Everton. Might as well see if David Moyes wants a job.

   1. We could see if our old friend “Tactics” Tim Sherwood is available.

4. Terrified to say much but i really fear Everton, Watford Leicester and Wolves might give us a tough run for 6th next season if we dont have an above average window.

   1. There’s a rumor Wolves may go after Gareth Bale. Wouldn’t that be a laugher if Wolves out spend us in the market.

      I totally believe 7th or 8th next season is a distinct possibility. However Man Utd are a bigger tire fire than us, so misery loves company, they’ll be down there with us.

      1. United have money that we can only dream of, so ultimately they’ll be some degree of “fine”, almost certainly better off than us if we can’t get it together. They have been AWFUL though – I called us finishing above them if no other top 6 team as far back as the game vs Utd at the Emirates. Gladly I was right, sadly I was accurate.

   2. If Newcastle have new money coming in and Benitez at the helm still, might as well add them to that list.

      1. Fairly certain that Newcastle will be ManCity’s unofficial B team.

   3. Nah. I don’t think so. We finished 13 points ahead of Wolves and a full 20 ahead of Watford (Tottenham and Chelsea finished, respectively, a mere one and two points better than that, and I don’t see anyone talking about them needing to look over their shoulder, despite a lot of people talking about their impending struggles next season, depending on what does or doesn’t happen this summer).

      Wolves had a one-off this season. They reminded me of Burnley last season, who finished 7th last year, but 15th this year. I expect a similar drop-off for Wolves in 2019-2020. Watford, Leicester, and Everton all finished roughly where they did last season, so no change there.

      It’s easy to be down after a humiliating defeat like that, but I think we exaggerate the doom factor if we start thinking about 7th or 8th. Just don’t see it happening.

      We finished 6th last season with 63 points, and 5th this season with 70 points. That matters.

      1. I would never compare Wolves to Burnley. The football was/is so vastly different. Burnley played garbage kick and chase stuff and came back down to earth, Wolves I would argue will have durability.

         1. There’s a durability to kick and chase as well, as much as we might hate it aesthetically, so I don’t agree. We see these kinds of clubs every once in a while, who come up from the Championship and have a stormer in their first season in the Premier League, before settling down.

            Again: 13 points better than Wolves. 20 better than Watford. If we had finished 13+ points below any team this season, would you be talking about how we’ll overtake them next season?

            I don’t think so. Or, if you would, I’d consider that an unreasonable position.

            1. … if you consider one position static and the other team has to “overtake” them. Rather I think we’re trending down and could very well be 8-10 points lower next season and they climb a few. But I take your point.

               I was only commenting really on your comparison of Wolves and Burnley. I don’t dispute that we should, even with the exact same roster, stay ahead of those teams… but we’re definitely not going to be in the equation for top 4.

         2. I apologize in advance here but Burnley’s main attack wasn’t actually kick and rush: they played for set plays. So, it is more accurately described as kick, knock down, fall over, free kick, shuffle shuffle pull grab, goal-mouth scramble, moan about “the children” in the press after.

      2. People aren’t talking about Tottenham or Chelsea probably because:

         1) they have an identity on the football pitch, they play a style of football.
         2) Chelsea just won the Europa League.
         3) Tottenham are in the final of the Champions League.
         4) Arsenal’s point tally this season is a fugazi.

         1. In reality, the Premier League is broken. It’s all pointless because City with Pep as manager will win the next 10 years if they want. Liverpool will not be able to repeat this past season and I can’t see how they improve on it. City know they have a transfer ban on the horizon so will go and replace Kompany, Fernandinho and Aguero and probably upgrade on Mendy who is a walking injury.

            So it’s all an academic debate, Chelsea, Spurs, Liverpool, United… all flawed franchises with limited resources battling basically for top 4 and the occasional shot at glory in the CL or FA Cup.

            Every major league is broken – Bundesliga (Bayern), Serie A (Juventus), La Liga (Barcelona), Ligue Un (PSG) and now the Premier League (City).

            City should be so grateful for Liverpool making a run at them. Otherwise they would have won the league in March and they would be cast as villains instead of marvels of football.

            1. I never thought about this but it is so true and so discouraging

5. Sadly so true

6. I said before the season started that finishing 5th would be about right given the squad we have, the project before us, and the massive transition period the club is in right now. Losing Bellerin and Holding (and possibly the underrated Welbeck as well) for the season only made Emery’s job harder. Not having a technical director is also a problem. These things can’t be dismissed as “excuse making.” Add all those circumstances together (and many I’m not even mentioning) make for a serious challenge for any manager, and there was, actually, a number of things I liked about this season, all things considered. Sokratis and Lacazette recently said how much they admired Emery’s coaching. I wouldn’t expect Ozil to say that! But everyone and their dog predicted last summer that Ozil and Emery would be chalk and cheese.

   So I’m willing to give Emery a pass this year. If I don’t sense any progress by next May, then I think we can justifiably hope / expect the club to move him on.

   1. I disagree that missing Bellerin and Holding was the reason why Emery failed to get his guys to play progressive, passing, possession-based football. This is Emery’s thing, man. His teams play bad football. He’s not a progressive manager. His teams also tend to collapse because they aren’t good at protecting the ball – this has been true for years – way before the debacle with PSG and Barcelona. And he was “outsmarted” by teams/managers with significantly smaller budgets both here and in the EL this year and in years past. Even Wenger outsmarted him multiple times when he was at PSG. And when he won the EL I remember being struck with how utterly dysfunctional his teams seemed and how they were lucky not to lose those games.

      Managers take a long time to go up the ladder until they reach their peak and then they drop, twice as quickly. We got a manager on the way down the managerial ladder. The dude is a bust and judging by the looks on the faces of Lacazette, Auba, and others yesterday I think the squad knows it.

      All that said, Emery isn’t going anywhere but that’s because Arsenal are not going to pay him £5m a year or whatever it will cost for his last season to fire him.

      This reminds me of the time when Arsenal bought Lichtsteiner. I said then that the worst case scenario is if he actually had to play football for Arsenal. I’ll say something similar now: based on Emery’s history and the player’s he’s purchased in the past, the worst case scenario for me, right now, is if Emery is allowed to sell a bunch of players and rebuild this team.

      I will be curious to hear your assessment of Emery, not in May but in October. I bet you an ice-cream cone that you will be Emery out by then.

      1. I didn’t say Holding and Bellerin were the reason. I said they are a part of many, many other circumstances that should mitigate our anger or disappointment at how this team landed. I also don’t think an improved position and points tally should be ignored. You suggest Wenger “outwitted” this downward-trending Emery on a regular basis, and yet somehow, here we are, one better in the league and one better in the Europa League than Wenger could manage.

         Criticism of him is fair, but wholesale dismissal, especially given the circumstances, is unfair.

         I don’t think we’ll finish worse than 5th next year, though I think if we do finish 5th that he should go. I think he will go.

7. Failure and mistakes, I can handle. In and of itself the results are fine. The problem is that this is the plan. This, for lack of a better word, style, where Ozil is meant to be the workhorse for Kolasinac’s creativity. I mean, how?

   But I get it. Always trying to create an escape route for himself. He’s blamed Wenger, the players, the board for lack of funds (softly though) and has promised what? Competitiveness. Not results, not any of the other stuff he’d promised us before. Just to run around a bit.

   He’s rebuilding Arsenal in his own image. A small time club with small time players ‘working hard’. He might even get some great results against better teams doing that. Underdog Emery is out of his depth, so he’ll drag Arsenal down to keep himself afloat.

   Raul and Vinai are probably worried about their jobs too though. Which is why they MIGHT fire him. More likely to double down, bring in Edu as the second tier scapegoat and go from there.

   1. Shard-
      While I’m not opposed to criticizing our manager, I believe you’re imputing to Unai bad faith and a failure to take responsibility. These are some of the same criticisms,, that in my memory, you vehemently defended Wenger from.

      1. Wenger had earned that trust. Emery has done the opposite, and his record suggests this is no accident. All the criticisms and warnings from the time of his hiring about him have been correct. PSG found this out. They’ve got money to never fall down in Ligue 1. Arsenal in the PL, don’t.

   2. Totally agree with Wasatch.

      Shard, I believe you wanted to give Wenger another chance in 2018-2019, the same manager who dragged us down to our worst league position and points tally in how many years? It would be nice if you could extend a bit of the same grace for Emery this season, particularly given that it’s his first season at a club with a number of problems right now.

      1. Look, this points thing is a false dawn. Points are a result of netting across the table. Year on year comparisons for a club won’t make complete sense.

         The first thing to check os whether position on position points have been lost or gained. Compared to last season, the bottom two have done significantly worse and the 18th place team slightly worse. So those points have become available to other teams and one can say that if Arsenal jist gets two free wins and a draw from bottom three we are seven points better and so are our neighbours (3rd to 6th).

         Hence, year on year comparisons aren’t reliable unless the overall position by position points dont move much, which is not the case this season.

         1. I like this point

   3. He also blamed Ramsey for getting himself injured and he blamed Ramsey for having his head turned.

      “Now we can speak about that,” he said. “Sometimes you cannot play every match with the same players because some players can be a risk for injury. When he was playing against Napoli, he was injured.

      “The Monday before we played Watford, we won 1-0, and I prefer he didn’t play. I spoke with him. “Aaron, we are playing a lot of matches now. I think you need to rest one match.’

      “[He said]: ‘No, no, coach, I want to play, I want to play, I want to play, I want play, it is very important for me, it is very important for the team, I want to play.’

      “‘OK. Play.’ And we won. After, Napoli. ‘You OK?’ “Coach, I can, I can, I can.’ And this is the process with him I had.”

      “Really, his process this year is a strange process, a strange way. At the beginning, he started the pre-season very excited and well. I said: “Whoa, looking at him close…whoa.”

      “But after, in his mind, he was thinking “my future, my future, my future” and something I said to him and in the press conference [was] he was a little distracted. Really, I was thinking his performance is not with the balance and regularity.”

      Honestly, fuck this guy.

      1. And the weird ‘It’s his personal choice’ thing with Miki.

         I was holding my tongue on Emery on the day of the EL final, when I read this interview and kind of just lost it.

         I don’t get it man. I mean it’s obviously meant to make himself look good, but he just comes off looking worse, every single time.

         Same when he went after Wenger. Just say he did a great job, we’re grateful, but results dried up (no need to even say this!) but we go again etc. Why did he have to talk about losing competitive edge? Cos he knows that was the media line used to attack Wenger. And more to the point, he can’t actually talk about better football or substantially better results.

         He’s using the pre-existing division in the fanbase to further himself. I also get the feeling he uses his lack of fluency in English to his advantage. Plus that ‘French made fun of me for speaking their language’ thing. The truth is probably that they made fun of HIM and not his French.

         1. Ugh.

            I see where this is going. Throw away or minimize the language and cultural difference and go all in with the imputation of bad motive, bad faith, etc.

            Ugly.

            1. Emery didn’t know what he was saying when he promised protagonistas and pressing. He didn’t know what he was implying by saying competitive spirit lost, he didn’t know what it meant to say Miki had made his personal decision, he didn’t realise he was going badmouthing a departing player.

               No, all of this is just because of his language? Yeah right. What’s ugly is your imputation of ugliness to a position reached based on his words and actions.

               Ugh.

            2. You said:

               “I also get the feeling he uses his lack of fluency in English to his advantage.”

               On what basis are you making this imputation of bad motive? A feeling.

               Right.

               Like I said, ugly.

            3. Why exactly is it ugly to ‘feel’ something about what someone is saying. Go ahead Bun, call me r*cist for daring to suggest that the man is calculating and less than honest in his words to the public.

            4. You said he was using his lack of fluency to hide sinister motives. That’s a baseless and tactless assumption.

            5. It’s not baseless. It’s based on the fact that many of his public utterances are self serving, designed to make himself look good/sympathetic (which is fine) even by pulling others down (which is not)

               This is simply another tool in his locker to that end. It’s no big deal. People do it all the time and then claim to have been misquoted because it was ‘lost in translation’ or something. In fact, that is what you are doing here for him. It goes with knowing how to handle the press, especially press that can turn hostile very quick.

               It’s an assumption inasmuch as any intent has to be assumed. Hence, ‘feeling’. Tactless? Hah..Maybe Emery is affecting me.

            6. Since, as you rightly say, all managers speak in self-serving ways all the time, I fail to see why you wrote that screed against Emery in particular. You might easily have written that about Wenger for similar comments he’s made over the years, but of course you, Shard, would never do that, would you?

               Basing an assumption of self-servitude on actual words is one thing. But claiming that the “truth” is that they made fun of him as a person, that he’s using the fanbase for nefarious purposes, that he hides behind his lack of fluency, as you say here:

               “He’s using the pre-existing division in the fanbase to further himself. I also get the feeling he uses his lack of fluency in English to his advantage. Plus that ‘French made fun of me for speaking their language’ thing. The truth is probably that they made fun of HIM and not his French.”

               Tactless. Your projection is so obvious.

            7. You’re conveniently ignoring what part applies to all managers including Wenger, and what Emery is doing that is different and unsavoury to me.

               All I’m projecting is a dislike for how Emery operates, and yes, a distrust of him. I didn’t start with that position. Quite the opposite.

               Also, it’s well reported that PSG walked all over him because it took them all of two seconds to realise he was full of it. I wouldn’t put it past Emery to try to gain sympathy and favour through praising how tolerant people in England and Arsenal are. Do I know he’s doing this? No. How does anyone KNOW anything like that? But it is my reading of him based on his many comments, his reported history, and his actions.

               The fact that you’d skirt around this issue hinting at r*acism on my part, might lead one to suggest you’re the one projecting, since his language seems to be the biggest issue for you. Why would a Frenchman matter more to me than a Spaniard (or a Basque or any other identity you want to assign to him)? Cos the Frenchman could speak English? WTF man?

            8. When two managers engage in the same behavior, but you only call out one for it, it shows hypocrisy and bias. I have no idea whether it’s about his ethnicity. It could be you just don’t like his personality. Whatever the case, your bias shows.

            9. I don’t like him and because it is not the same behaviour. That’s the whole point. It’s not that hard to understand if you weren’t just in fight mode.

            10. It is the same sentiment, just expressed differently, and you don’t like how it’s expressed. That’s where the bias comes in. You’d recognize that if you weren’t in fight mode. See what a cheap shot that is?

            11. Actually I don’t. Cos when I read this my reaction was to consider the merit of what you (and Unai) were saying.

                I still disagree that it’s the same thing.

            12. I think you’re ashamed of your ad hominem and you’re doing a bad job of back-peddling.

                You imputed bad motives to a struggling command of English. That’s pretty awful, Shard.

      2. Wow. Seriously, Tim?

         I think you’re reacting to his language, because the sentiments he expressed are no different from ones Wenger and many other managers have made about players claiming to be fine all the time and also being distracted about their future.

         I take no issue with those comments, and I’m also willing to take some of what he says with some grace given that he’s still learning the language.

         1. I feel like it’s a combination of the timing (blaming Ramsey for the injury right before the final that we clearly needed him in), the tone, the very direct blaming of Ramsey (which is funny since… uhhh he’s the manager and if Ramsey is in the red zone why are you playing him), and blaming Ramsey’s head being turned for the reason why Emery dropped him early in the season. Ramsey’s head wasn’t turned. Arsenal withdrew their contract offer to him. Huge difference.

            The man does this. He’s an excuse maker. In this case he got his excuses for why we lost the EL final out up front (Ramsey) instead of looking at the fact that Sarri told the world he knew how to counter the back three the week before the match. Meanwhile Emery said: The balance is to reduce — but not lose — our capacity to attack, while getting better in defence.

            I’m pretty certain that’s tactically bankrupt.

            1. I don’t bristle at the criticism of Emery’s management. Some of our failures this season must land at his door. What I find irrational is the complete write-off, both as a manager and as a man, in circumstances that bear mitigation, and yes, that does include his imperfect command of English.

               The suggestion we’ll look back at this season with fondness comes from an exaggerated sense of despair. At worst, I think we’ll look at this season as an indication of the limit of Emery’s abilities.

               I’ll look forward to that ice cream cone in October.

            2. I base my judgement of Emery off his managerial career, not just this season. I had a piece ready to go at the start of the season which was deeply concerned that Emery was a fraud. I canned it because the other site I was connected to would have gotten a lot of stick. He hasn’t changed my opinion of him. Only confirmed it.

               Also, I have studied 4 languages (Japanese, Russian, Spanish and English) and I don’t have a problem with his accent/command of English, whatever. In fact, I’m one of the few Gooners who take people to task for the not-too-subtle racism of the whole “good ebening” crap. So, I think you’re off base here with this critique of my position/

            3. What judgment are we talking about here? Seriously, no joke, I’m (obviously) having trouble understanding why you’re throwing around “bankrupt,” “fraud,” and “garbage” for a manager who bettered our league performance from last season, and did so in his first season at the club, with no funds available in January to help boost a squad in need of some serious reinforcement, with no right-back for most of the season (apart from a pensioner), with two central midfielders adapting to a new league, with an aging and increasingly inconsistent left-back (whose replacement is the even more erratic Kolasinac), with a playmaker whose salary became an issue (in hindsight, we should have let Ozil go and awarded Ramsey with a substantial raise), etc. Did I mention he bettered our league position this season, and garnered more points?

               When you start using “fraud” and similar for Emery, these words cease to mean anything. I would also push back on your claims about language. You have called him an “excuse-maker” for the kinds of sentiments expressed by any manager in the game, and you are prone to taking his words literally when he talks about tactics, even though you know that he communicates imperfectly in English, and therefore struggles to make his intentions clear.

               Like I said, criticism is fair. But is he a “fraud”? Come on.

      3. Emery remimds me of the time when Greg Chappel was coach of Indian Cricket Team. I understand this may not male sense to citizens of non-commonwealth nations; I apologise for that.

         1. *make

8. Do you remember our first league game against Manchester City after signing Alexis? We went in somewhat expecting to lose, if I remember correctly, and sure enough we went behind (Aguero, I think). Then we levelled up through Walcott (I think) and Alexis put us in the lead. Naturally we conceded again and hung on for a point, and came out of that game frustrated, a bit disappointed. A game we expected to lose before the fact.

   It’s a bit of a metaphor for this season and the perception of it (by your summary anyway – I had no expectations personally, and I suspect it was similar for many others, given we were moving into the unknown for the first time in a long time). It was a tough first couple of games and Emery got a pass for those, but to come so far ahead of schedule and then spend the last couple of months reaching lower and lower depths leaves you thinking there was more on the table and we just didn’t take it.

   1. Sorry, this was meant as a reply to Bunburyist, I seem to have clicked something wrong.

   2. Of course, which is why there would be such a different narrative if we had started the season the way we finished it, but ended it the way we started. That, and given the circumstances this season, and our total points tally, is why I tend to see the unmitigated negativity right now as an unfair reflection of the season and where we’re at as a club. I’m not happy with what happened these last two months, but I’m not ready to call time on Emery.

      1. [I’m no psychologist but] maybe another aspect of the manifest disappointment, relating specifically to yesterday’s game, is that this is a team we’ve just about evenly matched (in actual head-to-head games and final points tally) this season, and when we had more on the line than they did in a head-to-head situation, it wasn’t even close.

         1. Yes, that was disappointing. We know we can beat Chelsea. And, if we’re being fair, we should acknowledge that something Emery did well this season is prepare us for games against our top six rivals. But anything can happen in a cup game, and besides we went into it in terrible form (if you want to count form in a cup game, which I think you should).

9. Apart from spelling testicles wrongly, the rest of your piece is pertinent. May I point out that Arsenal splinted Emery and he agreed to join the club precisely because both the club and coach suit each other as both are garbage. Arsenal are mid-table and Emery is a grade B coach.

10. Our late season collapse during the run-in, throwing away 4th place and yesterday’s abysmal 2nd half performance were downright Wengerian. So I agree with Tim in that there has been zero improvement in Emery’s maiden season. It’s as if Wenger never left (minus the pithy quotes and Gallic charm of course)

    But despite my extreme disappointment in the results under the new manager, to start screaming Emery out is reductive and so I agree with Bunburyist also.

    But more than Emery or where we’ve ended the season, my negativity stems from what I believe is complete lack of sporting interest from KSE other than doing whatever minimum (effort, funding, etc.) is necessary to keep the club profitable. And I don’t know if that means trophies for us.

    I read some comments elsewhere reflecting the anger of Gooners that Kroenke was not in attendance yesterday to which my reaction is: are you f%$king kidding me? Why on earth anyone who has been following this team would expect Stan to make the trip to Baku is beyond me. It’s probably a huge logistical effort to get off his own ranch which is probably bigger than Ajerbainjan and Armenia combined.

    He’s delegated his son Josh to this part of his business and I predict we won’t see him in London more than twice next season. I get that we ended the season 5th, almost 4th and not 15th but right now I’m not seeing how we’ll close that gap.

    1. Well, one way we might close the gap is win a single game more, and then we’re in third place!

       I jest.

       Sort of.

       Another way is to be smart with our transfers this summer, get some key players fit, and jettison a few players who can’t work under Emery or just can’t work. We also start Leno every game, who I think is a better keeper than Cech (though Cech is not to blame for the loss yesterday), actually have a right-back instead of a pensioner or a make-shift one.

       I’m not expecting massive changes, but there will be some big ones: Cech, Ramsey, Lichtsteiner, and Welbeck, are all going. I am hoping we get rid of Ozil (somehow) and Mustafi as well. I imagine we’ll buy a RB, a wide forward or winger, and a CB or CM. Three players, max. I think we’ll also see more of Willock and perhaps ESR as well. I have less faith in Nketiah making the step up.

       Anyway, who knows if any of that will make us better.

       I have to imagine (again, nothing like proof here) that having this season to acclimatize to the league, learn more about his players, the language, etc., will make Emery a more effective manager next season. At least, that’s my hope!

       1. But can we keep Jenkinson? Just because that picture of his room as kid with all the Arsenal stuff is still so cute.

11. appointed, not splinted although he appears splinted.

    May I also add that, the systemic and structural flaws at Arsenal began in 2006. Decline takes years and the Wenger fans didn’t tolerate any critique of him or the regime he was part of, till 2014. There are many Arsenal fans who wanted Wenger and Kroenke to go from 2008 onwards but at fan sites and on twitter, they were constantly abused. While this may not seem relevant now, it’s important to remember that Wenger was untouchable although even his later years seem blissful compared to the “skip of shit” that Arsenal is under Emery.

    Hubris is a malady that goes in deep and the victim doesn’t recognise it till he or she starts to swallow others – what happened to Wenger under Kroenke and what happened to celebrity Arsenal fans under Wenger was a hubristic alliance. Now that he has left, what remains is a washed out crocodile called Sanllehi from Barca and the corporate mundane talker Venkatesham – both safeguarding their future whilst Arsenal sink further into inanity and decline. Arsenal finished as a top club in August 2011 – after that 8-2 drubbing. What has followed that is what happens in rigor mortis and what happened last night is death of a club that will revert to the eighties style Arsenal.

    Unless Kroenke sells, Arsenal will slide further into lower table madness. Emery is a grade B coach who speaks garbage – the fans won’t protest as it is too bourgeoisie to protest in England. I agree with you – this season is going to be the best in the next ten years. To hope is to regress mentally – there’s no hope for unless. The club as we recognised or knew is finished.

    1. I still got a ton of jeers and insults on twitter today for suggesting: I had been a critic of Wenger since 2004. Weird fans.

12. People acting like I’m coming at Emery outta nowhere. Look back earlier in the season and I was supporting him when others were criticising. He told us what he wanted to do, and he ought to have time to do it.

    But I noticed how all of that went away. All the possession, pressing, playing out from the back, attacking football, building on what is, improving players, playing youth, representing Arsenal values. All of that went away and it became all about results. It didn’t matter that we were creating fewer shots, cos Auba n Laca were scoring and we were getting the points. Or that we were defensively worse. Cos results. Except he completely bombed on that front in the end too.

    I don’t particularly mind if we finish 10th next year as long as it’s working under a plan I can get behind. Emery doesn’t have it. He claims 2 years at PSG was a long term project.

    This has nothing to do with results. If we’d won the Europa I’d still want him gone. It’s his lack of vision (and flip flops) that I take issue with.

    1. Why I disagree with giving Emery the sack, I salute your passion for our club. A passion I wish I could transfer to the ownership and management.

       1. Thanks 1NTA!

    2. You wanted Emery to keep his promise of playing pressing football, but at the same time you and a whole lot of fans immediately began to second-guess Emery and stood up against him when he didn’t play Ozil for tactical reasons.

       How on earth do you play Ozil in the hole and be able to press as Klopp or Pep does?

       But he has to play Ozil because he is the biggest player and the most talented in the squad, right? I agree. But it is a balancing act.

       It is a balancing act, but not an easy one at all. But priorities must be set right. And that describes Emery’s job this season (his first season btw). Sticking to a said style win or loss (in your first season) doesn’t present you with the clearest opportunity to get priority number one – entry into the champions league.
       But even then, we’ve seen him come good on his promise to be genuinely competitive in the big games (Spurs, Man UTD, Liverpool at home, Napoli, Chelsea). And in the majority of those games, you saw Emery set the team up to press and be positionally intelligent.

       But as balancing act again, he didn’t pursue possession in those games because he thought it could be counter-productive considering we just do not have the personnel available to execute EFFECTIVELY.

       I always thought that if Emery qualified us for Champions League football this season. Then plain and simple he got the job done!

       But because he didn’t, I say he failed to get the job done. But I will give him a summer of recruitment for him to really prove himself.

13. We can give Emery another year as a courtesy or because we are understanding if we want to. Just don’t expect anything better. UE and Arsenal are a bad fit. I dont care if we finish below Wolves next season as long as we build something with a coach who has a plan

14. People say Emery will/can turn this thing around when and if he can bring his “type” of players. His types of players have only shown the ability to win Europa League Cups with his coaching methods. Other than Bellerin and Iwobi (on a good day) has Emery not shown that he can improve these players. to Tim’s point despite that be being part of his sales pitch for this job.
    We want players who can be Champions League quality players (whatever those are) because yesterday’s team was no way near the that quality. These are the players who couldn’t make a Carabao Cup Final, an FA Cup final, couldn’t qualify for CL outright and got embarrassed yesterday.
    Sarri should be thanking Emery for his cup win and saving his job at Chelsea.
    At least Giroud had the decency to thank Arsenal.
    Now maybe we can see why Deschamps prefers Giroud and doesn’t call up Lacazette for one off tournaments.

    1. I keep saying it as often as I see it, Giroud’s first goal was Koscielny’s error. It changed the complexion of the game and we stopped defending in midfield. It doesn’t make Giroud better than Lacazette.
       In my opinion Lacazette would have scored a hat trick if he had Giroud’s opportunities from the first half & the second half.

15. There is also the practical question of Emery’s contract. Do you activate the extension clause? Do you wait and let it run as if it’s his last season? How does that sit with the players here, and any new signings. Do any of these signings even want to play for him anyway?

    I don’t know. I just don’t think keeping Emery is a good idea. It’s reasonable. I get it. But I don’t see it going well.

    We sacked Bruce Rioch in favour of a visionary, if more risky hire. We really ought to do the same again.

    1. Emery’s vision: The balance is to reduce — but not lose — our capacity to attack, while getting better in defence.

       REDUCE ATTACK.

       REDUCE POSSESSION.

       This is going to be a long season.

16. Spurs lose on Saturday, the whole world will make sense again.

17. Spurs lose on Saturday, the whole world will make sense again.

    1. When we lost yesterday, I knew immediately that Spurs are going to win the CL. It just feels like cosmic design at this point. One final message from the universe that the world is ending!

       1. The universe giving us (Arsenal) the middle finger (USA) or the ‘V’ sign (for those across the pond)

18. Can we all agree that, aside from a being a punchline, Mustafi has to be one of the worst all time defensive signings. In fact we’ve had two in the same season. Him and Lichsteiner. Maybe that explains some of our season.
    Others?
    Silvestre surely.
    Remember a guy named Nelson Vivas? He was supposed to dislodge Lee Dixon and/or Nigel Winterburn. Ha! Instead
    Andre Santos? Now playing in the Swiss 2nd Division.

19. I agree with this blog 100%. You articulated it brilliantly.

    Emery should be given the boot immediately. Nealry everything he was meant to improve (even modestly, none of us expected miracles) has got worse, in some areas much worse.
    It is yet another sign that this is a club going downhill quickly that he will almost certainly be here next season.

    Very dark times at the Holloway dust bowl.

20. Emery signed a three-year deal with a two-year clean break clause. Get ready for the next distraction next season… the drama over whether Arsenal will honor the third year or break at the end of the season thereby making him a lame duck manager.

    Last year I wanted our own Pocchetino who could work with academy talent and young players. I’m pretty convinced now that Emery isn’t that guy. So why wade through the drama? Just call it quits now. We can do a Watford and change managers every season.

    1. “why wade through the drama?” – avoiding a payout, basically. I’m not leaning either way, I tend not to when the decision isn’t in my hands anyway, but unless form/results get really funky during the 19/20 season, he’s here until at least the end of it.

    2. I don’t know. It depends on whether you think we got to 5th in spite of a) Emery or b) the squad. What I’m getting at is that, from where I’m sitting, this looks a terribly imbalanced and dysfunctional squad. You could make a case that Emery did pretty well with the players he had. Or you could make a case that Emery ruined them. I’m more inclined to believe the former, as my comments above make clear.

       With these players, and with a paltry transfer budget, do you think any truly exceptional managers are going to want this job? And again, with these players, and with this budget, do you want to put this dysfunction in the hands of a newbie like Arteta?

       I’m not sure.

       Accepting Emery is, I think, to accept that we are where we are because of the club’s ambition. He’s a good manager for the 3rd-5th region in this league, and the Kroenke’s are hoping if they roll the dice again, he’ll hit closer to 3rd one year. Would a return to the CL mean more money injected in the club, and the appointment of a ‘great’? Ask Stan.

       1. I’ll revise slightly: “3rd-6th.”

          Again, I just don’t see us finishing 7th or 8th next year. And I’m staking an ice cream cone on being right about that.

       2. I think by every metric except points (which has its flaws as pointed out above) he’s done worse than Wenger. And that’s after the club spent almost $100m in transfers.

          “sentiments expressed by any manager in the game” – he threw Ramsey under the bus, man. It was direct. He blamed Ramsey for having his head turned and for being injured, the day before the big final. “Why isn’t Ramsey here?” “Because he insisted on playing.” That was definitely CYA stuff.

          He also blamed Mkhitaryan for not making the final calling it “his choice”. I read the quotes, watched the tapes, this isn’t some lost in translation stuff – he’s not saying “footballistically” when he means to say “in the manner of football”. He says it three times that he asked Ramsey to not play and that Ramsey demanded to play. He repeats that Mkhitaryan’s choice was not to come with the team.

          This is the kind of stuff that Wenger may have hinted at during his time at Arsenal but he was extremely reticent to call out players by name and frankly I have a lot more respect for Ramsey than I have for Emery.

          As for my use of “fraud” let’s go back and look at his own words and decide:

          Two days ago before the final (translated from Spanish on Arseblog) – “What Wenger did in this club was very big. He managed to give a touch of quality to make the game more fluid and colourful, but little by little he lost the competitive gene. That is what was transmitted to me and what I was hired for when I interviewed Raúl Sanllehí and the owners. The economic potential of United, City or Liverpool is greater than ours, but by history and structure, Arsenal is among the top 10 clubs in Europe, and we have to place it there again.”

          Ok, that’s some strong blame of Wenger, which fine whatever, but has he made Arsenal more competitive? Not particularly. The end of season collapse was the worst in decades. The way that Arsenal just gave up against Chelsea yesterday? He also talked about stopping Hazard in that same interview (in Spanish) and Hazard was MOTM by yards. He talks a lot but doesn’t deliver.

          Ok, how about his own targets for the season? Judge me in May, right?

          “In my career I am very demanding for all, demanding of the players also. My idea is to be a protagonist for all of the match. We play against teams with this personality, and I think the history here shows they love playing with possession of the ball. I like this, and when you don’t have possession of the ball I want a squad very, very intense in pressing. It’s two things that are very important for me. Being a protagonist, possession of the ball, and pressing.”

          I’m not sure how this is a problem with translation, since it was English and I think he’s being VERY direct. Demanding of the players? I guess so, maybe? He did cave to Ozil after dropping him. Maybe that was his version of demanding?

          Protagonist for the entire match? Just yesterday he changed that to saying that he wants to sacrifice attack for defense – Arsenal’s attack this season was the worst it’s ever been since the 90’s and the defense is worse than under Wenger. So, that was just a flat out BS line.

          Possession? No. This is an utter fail. We get pressed off the ball like Buttercups in a child’s hope book.

          Ok so how about that intense pressing? VERY VERY intense pressing?? Do we look like a pressing team? Not even remotely.

          How does he define success? “Success would be developing, and that’s about battling for every title.”

          We didn’t even battle for fourth place.

          Is lack of pressing because Bellerin was hurt? Is lack of character because Holding was hurt? How about possession? Remember that he said in July that he was very happy with the squad and didn’t need any more purchases? He said that the squad was talented and he could work with them? He promised to improve players?

          Judging the man by his own standards, this has been a failure of a season and you have to question whether he’s the kind of guy who just interviews really well, gets the job, then can’t stand up to any of the claims he made, deflects criticism (he blames the refs a LOT for his failures at PSG). Also known as “a fraud”.

          I can’t figure out why you’re defending him. He’s been bad and failed by his own standards at his own objectives.

          1. I’m not defending him in the way you imagine. He bears some blame for the collapse. I just find your overwrought wholesale dismissal unfair, and your blithe diminishment of any mitigating circumstances or any successes rhetorically self-defeating.

             For example, I can’t understand why you don’t lay some of your obvious frustration at the steps of the Kroenke’s who will never again support a manager / coach seriously, just as they gave Emery pretty much nothing to address glaring concerns in the squad, and will continue to give him pretty much nothing this summer to do the same.

             I can accept Emery has his limitations as a manager, but the idea that he’s a fraud, tactically bankrupt, etc., is over-egging the pudding. The players deserve some blame, as do the owners and management structure. You’re so often ready to tell people that nothing is black or white, but this is the exception? Now it’s all on Emery?

             What he says about Wenger is undeniable, by the way. He did lose his touch, badly, during his late era. You’ve admitted as much. Maybe you don’t like him saying that, but that doesn’t make him a managerial dumpster fire.

             1. It’s not what he says about Wenger (or Ramsey or Miki) It’s what saying this says about him.

                You’re not wrong about it being nuanced. Sure it is. But when you’re assessing the impact of the coach and the issue is whether he ought to stay or go, at some point the nuance has to give way to certainty.

                Emery had a lot of support and trust from me when he started. I was willing to overlook all the negative things said about him by journalists and players, and doubts about his record. He’s thrown that trust away and it’s not some knee jerk reaction on my part. All those warnings about him are exactly what we’re seeing here.

                I’m sure he’s a nice guy, and he really does value hard work. No doubt he works hard himself. But he’s not suited to being coach at a big club. Even a struggling one like ours. Completely the wrong personality and tactics for it. If he manages to bring in his own players, impose his own (alien) culture on the club, we’ll truly become a mid-table club. I really do believe that.

             2. And before it degenerates into another debate about ‘ugliness’, the culture I am talking about is an organisational one, not his personal regional/national/political identity.

                Emery even said he’d look to build on what was here. That was part of why he was hired. All of a sudden it’s now ok to claim he needs an entire overhaul? Strongly disagree and I fear the consequences.

             3. What he said about Wenger is BS.

                Where Wenger made Arsenal’s football less competitive due to aesthetics, Emery tries to make Arsenal competitive by making the football more caveman.

                He thought he was going to win the Europa League and felt emboldened to spew crap.

                You don’t say this shit unless you can carry it. If Pep G came to us and say this shit, it makes sense because you will see him backing it up. But then, he will be so obsessed with the present it wouldn’t even cross his mind.

                Emery is just putting it like how Jose did it to LVG and Ryan Giggs. But even more nauseating since he pretends to be nice about it.

             4. Where have I NOT blamed Kroenke??? I have said for years that he’s not going to invest in the club, that his clubs exist for the sole purpose of accumulating wealth (and not through investment but rather just through slow growth), and that he’s not the kind of owner who is going to demand a winning mentality from his coach. If Kroenke was a strong owner, who wants to win the League (etc), he would have fired Unai Emery an hour after we were demolished in that final. The collapse we saw at the end of this season is inexcusable.

                I am not a Kroenke fan. That doesn’t mean that I see any viable alternatives. Usmanov? Some guy from Saudi Arabia who chops journalists into bits and feeds them to pigs? I would like it if he was passionate about football and would like it even better if he invested his own money in the club or fuck at least wanted us to be competitive but I really don’t know who the alternative is. And not only that but my man is dug in deeper than an Alabama tick. I can’t see us getting Kroenke out of this club, ever.

                Back to Emery: If this had been a Wenger collapse we’d have been eulogizing him. I think this is something maybe people don’t understand about me and my sports philosophy: I can love Wenger and want him to go because he’s lost his touch. But I have the exact same lack of patience for Emery and none of the love.

                As for “over egging” the Emery. Ok, sure. Because I want people to admit what I think that they know: he’s not good. Not good in almost any way. What’s his accomplishment this season? A few lucky wins over other top six teams? Fuck me.. Not only that but what happens if Kroenke invests a bunch of money in Emery? That’s money we will never have again. This is a guy who didn’t understand what Ramsey brought to the table until he had him in the team for 6 months. A guy who doesn’t have any idea how to use Ozil. A guy who thinks that Kolasinac is our best attack. I mean come on. That’s a truly frightening prospect.

                I’m not even sure I’m going overboard.

             5. Oh, also, the thing about Wenger. I think the problem here is what I raised: he is not an Arsenal supporter, I can’t trust that what he wants is what’s best for the club instead of what’s best for Emery. You know what I mean? It looks a lot like the man is shitting on a club legend to make himself look better. Or to put it less bluntly, he’s not earned the right to talk about Wenger. Besides, he’s got plenty of his own problems he should be looking at.

21. Arsenal- the club, the players and the fans, need someone who can inspire and reinvigorate. This season was an underachievement and if Unai remained, next season will feel the same way too. And Arsenal the brand, will become more diminished. That should concern Kronke.

22. This is/was a great discussion. A lot of smart, good to read back and forth.

    I’ve decided to be an Emery optimist. Well, not optimist. Way too strong. But I’m not going to write him off yet. There’s nothing rational about it. I barely have the strength for it. But I was so ground down by the downward slog of the last few (being generous, because he’s gone now) Wenger years, that I’d lost my enthusiasm for Arsenal football. As blasphemous as it is to some, my enthusiasm returned as soon as he left.

    The last month was a shambles. And the second half of the season didn’t feel as good as the first. But I’m not forgetting there was a very good run buried in there. There’s even evidence of those successes elsewhere on this blog. It’s found after the season had already been dismissed. So, ups and downs, as we’d expect at this point.

    I absolutely share concerns, especially related to ownership. And it’s a bummer how many neutral matches I found more entertaining than ours this season, I’m still getting over genuinely enjoying watching Newcastle and that scrappy Benitez guy, And, sure, the battle to not get relegated was more interesting than our last month.

    Anyway, yeah, Sell Auba, get anything for Ozil, move and don’t tell Mustafi…hope for the best. You know. Enthusiasm.

23. My greatest fear post Wenger was that we would turn into another Man U post Ferguson: searching the managerial wilderness the next great manager to lead us.
    Well we are in our David Moyes phase now. Giggs, van Gaal, Mourinho phases to come. Oh boy.

    Seriously, we are now no better than AC Milan waswith Gattuso who had the incredible decency to resign with 2 yrs left on his contract and left without taking his remaining salary.

    1. I don’t think that’s a fair criticism at all. I love how suddenly league position means nothing at all, it’s a “fugazi” or whatever. Here’s the key difference: Ferguson won the title in his last year; that meant his position was a poisoned chalice to the incoming managers. Wenger left after his worst season in charge, with the lowest points tally and table position of his Arsenal career. In short, Wenger did the Moyes year for us already.

       1. This is the Moyes year.

          I argue that league position is fake all the time. In the season that Leicester won the League I have said time and again that Arsenal should have won that season. There’s no difference between that argument and this one. We were way worse than our League position made us out to be. In the Leicester season we were way better than our league position made us out to be.

       2. One angle that can be taken with your Ferguson-to-Moyes argument is that since Wenger left after his worst season by several metrics, a subsequent improvement of some kind can almost be taken for granted (that is, if a drop-off was expected after a title win for Utd, then…). Basically, if your aim was to support Emery, this isn’t a particularly strong limb to lean on. It’s basically how I feel about Conte’s first season at Chelsea – a title win was amazing, but an improvement of any kind (from a 10th place finish) was par for the course.

          1. Especially after Arsenal invested nearly $100m.

24. test

25. test

26. Hey guys. Dr. Gooner here. Tim banned me a few weeks ago, presumably for disagreeing with him with too much vehemence. Something to do with Guendouzi’s positioning, as I recall. At any rate, it’s been a blessing in disguise for me to take this enforced break. I’ve noticed that responding to comments on the site often leaves me feeling angry and tired, and the time commitment is not inconsiderable.

    I’m only here today to plant my flag of hope amid Tim’s rubble pile of despair. Arsenal has problems as a sporting institution, but Arsenal are more than its wins record, its trophies or even its players and staff. Arsenal is what we, its supporters, make of it. Getting lost in the details of transfers and tactics can be a fun but ultimately fruitless exercise in frustration. I wish all of you lots of smiles, lots of friends and lots of fun cheering on our favorite team from near or far.

    I’ve occasionally had a great time interacting with you all, and if I didn’t it was because of my own pride and impetuousness. Most of you are fine folks with better restraint and more wisdom than I. Carry on, and keep the faith! Arsenal has endured worse and it will always flourish the hearts of its supporters.

    1. Welcome back Doc.

27. If there are no problems, why look for a solution?

    That’s how the Arsenal regime look at things.

    Enjoy the new kit, as Guenduozi runs wearing it, in endless existential circles of angst, while naive Arsenal fans, whom the Kroenke family detest, hope for answers. Meanwhile, Sanllehi aided by the hapless but clever self protective Venkatesham, envelop Arsenal fans in viperous twists of words and rhetoric.

    The only winners are the AFTV mob.

    Adieu, Arsenal, buried last night by “what can I do if I am so gorgeous”?

28. As someone who really likes Ozil, and thinks he could (still) be a great player in the right system, I appreciate that you add some context to his poor performances. The thing about the full backs isn’t something I would ever notice myself.

    1. Within the right system , surrounded by right players , under right conditions, against right opponents Ozil still could be all right, right?

       1. Well you’ve obviously added your own qualifications to what i’ve said to suggest that I think he’d only be good under VERY specific circumstances, which isn’t what I said, but whatever.

          In a system under Wenger that allowed him some freedom, he was consistently one of the best, if not THE best creator of chances and providers of assists in Europe. Also statistically, in big games against the top 4/6, his record of goals and assists was amongst the best in the league for a midfielder playing his position.

          In my mind, our defensive fragility, our somewhat half assed approach to defense, our general disorganization, our whatever you want to call it, obviously did exposed and exasperate the limitations of his game. That’s clear. I’m not saying none of that is his fault, he’s obviously a bit ‘lightweight’ and isn’t defensively…..but, in my opinion, too many other Arsenal players had a similar half assed approach to defensive work….but didn’t provide the benefit of being great at their ‘main’ job the way Ozil was at his (I obviously see Ozil’s main job as creating chances and providing assists though not everyone would agree).

          And look, he’s far from perfect. There are clear weaknesses to his game. I just don’t think it’s incredibly controversial to suggest that in a more organized team, that is set up with his weaknesses in mind, he could still be a great player……and no I don’t just mean against poor opposition on a sunny day or whatever, I mean against most teams on a consistent basis over the course of a full season.

29. The club’s in a down cycle but i’m not sure it’s fair to blame the manager: I think we’d be in the dumps whoever had been in charge. And in the dumps is relative: we were playing above ourselves until the last month’s meltdown, top 4 contenders and in a European final.
    As it is, we still need to divest ourselves of our past and reinvent ourselves, as United are doing, as Liverpool did, as The Spuds did. But it takes time. And possibly a few managerial iterations.
    As for players, emblematic of our past and our mismanagement is our no. 10. We should get rid, forget about reliance on a superstar and discover a team spirit and identity again. Getting shot of Mustafi would also be good. But Bellerin, ANM, Iwobi, LT, Guendouzi are all worth persevering with. As is Unai for another season but if nothing emerges without the distraction of Ozil, I’d get rid then.
    Reconciled to this likely time horizon, I’m going to enjoy the pleasures that do come along, like Iwobi winning goal of the nigh despite some stiff competition.
    Onwards and upwards. Victoria concordia crescit. Fuck off Ozil.

    1. I just don’t understand that level of animosity towards Ozil.

       It’s not his fault we offered him a huge contract to stay at the club.

       It’s not his fault we then changed to a manager that doesn’t fancy him.

       It’s not his fault that we now play a system that hobbles his greatest strengths.

       I get it. Not everyone is a fan of his and I understand why. But the guy’s been loyal since he arrived and the worst thing you can accuse him of is wanting to honor the contract that was given to him willingly by the club.

       1. “he earns £350k a week, m8”

          1. Sure Tim, I get that. It’s a stupid amount of money that’s probably hampering us now, but the guy only accepted the contract that was offered to him. It’s not like he forced Arsenal to give him that wage. If it’s a stupid amount of money, and not what he’s worth, (which arguably it isn’t) then Arsenal shouldn’t have offered that to him.

             I can completely understand people who want him moved on or off the books, but turning on him in such a manner just seems incredible to me.

             If he’s shit and nowhere near worth the money Arsenal gave him then surely it makes more sense to say ‘fu€k off’ to the people who approved that deal, as opposed to the player who’s guilty of the sin of accepting the kind of deal that most of us probably would have accepted in the same position.

             Personally, I just don’t think he’s done anything to deserve that level of vitriol and abuse.

       2. I’m not an Ozil hater by any means, in fact, I used to be one of his biggest fans but there are worse things I can accuse him of than just trying to honor his contract.
          How about expecting special treatment and throwing tantrums when benched, just for starters.
          Anyone who needs a PR department and isn’t a company that employs hundreds of people gives me a pause.

          1. Genuine question, what tantrum did he through?

             From what I recall, even he he’s playing badly he never turns on the team or the manager or downs tools.

             And doesn’t pretty much every high profile player have a pr department at this stage? If having a pr department is automatically a mark against every player that has one for you then fair enough. It just seems like a fairly standard modern element of the game at this stage to me.

30. I think Emery made many mistakes during the latest run of games, but you are too harsh on him. You are right, this team compared to last season’s team overall didn’t move forward: some things were improved, some things went backwards. However, I have a feeling that neither Wenger nor Emery failed per se, but players mentality changed. Players used to believe in Wenger and his methods, last season it was obvious they stopped and basically hang him out dry. And I feel like they are doing the same to Emery, maybe not intentionally, but I find it hard to explain why the same group of player deliver drastically different performances in different circumstances. I think Arsenal even last season would have done much better, even under Wenger’s imperfect methods, if players didn’t down their tools and started feeling too sorry for themselves. So, whoever is gonna come, doesn’t matter, core of this group of players should leave, otherwise nothing is gonna change with that mentality.

31. What I was going to say before that to and fro, was about Sarri. Did anyone see the little clip of him holding and looking at his medal, the first of his career AFAIK, and lost in his own world with a little smile? I wish he hadn’t won it, but it really was a very nice moment on a purely human level.

32. I understand where the Emery Out crowd are coming from. He certainly has given them an arsenal full of ammunition to pelt him with if you will, but the personal attacks are a bit weird tbh.

    Dissecting and parsing every word of his to catch him on twisting or manipulating facts.
    Was he supposed to lie and say it was Arsenal’s decision to leave Miki behind out of concerns for his safety? That would be absurd.
    Maybe Miki was concerned for his safety or maybe it was political. Or maybe he didn’t give a rats a$$ because he knows the club want to get rid of him.

    “He injured Ramsey” !?!
    Is this the same Ramsey who’s pulled a hamstring every single season since joining Arsenal that we are talking about here?
    I’ll bet my left nut that whoever is in charge of Juve next season will also injure Ramsey the same way Emery did and just like Wenger had done before him.

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a big Emery fan but my gripes with him are more of a nuts and bolts, and not rhetorical nature.
    For example, why play a weaker keeper who’s uncomfortable with ball at his feet, in the most important game of the season against a better team that surely will press you high up the pitch?
    Makes no sense whatsoever.
    Cech didn’t cost us this game but did he make any outstanding saves Leno wouldn’t have made?
    I think Leno saves the Giroud header.

    In any case , Emery is here to stay at least for another season and no top tier manager will even consider the Arsenal job with Kroenke at the helm, so no point gett all l worked up about it.

    Kroenke is the cancer that’s eating this club and everything else are just side effects of his disease.

    1. Agree 100 percent! Better managers than Emery would refuse to join Arsenal, knowing there’s very little to spend in the transfer market. And firing Emery after just one season even though he did better than Wenger last season (Emery: Europa League final & Top 4 race until May; Wenger: EL semis & out of Top 4 race by March) would turn the club into a circus, and no smart manager would join a circus. Kroenke and Sanllehi are more urgent problems imho.

33. Arsenal is a top club still in many aspects, notoriety, fan base, image, style of play still even, budget, infrastructure, youth development. There is no reason whatsoever that such a club should settle on an average coach. The coach is one of the main levers the club can use to empower all the positive elements listed above. Keeping an average coach (let alone a bad one, a failure, a fake…) is an excellent way of wasting the value that this club still offers. Even if I don’t find Emery’s performance completely bad (I do think he was unlucky with wounded players, I do think the team was fighting better for long spells…) there is no doubt in my mind that this club must respect itself and be demanding with regard to the quality of a position as fundamental as that of head coach. Doing anything else is shortsighted and must be caused by a misguided sense of economy and a fear to invest.

34. Three things I suggest:
    1) Higher a Psychatrist to help Emry with his illussions and panic.
    2) Do something about The Greedy owner and the two headed Director.
    3) Bring in some fans from Germany or Turkey for every home game and make some noise. ( This is for every supporter who goes to the emirates and seat back and watch as if it’s an opera.) What I observed from watching Arsenal is that visitors feel like at home and they are at ease. When we comment about the management and the players we should also know we are part of the game.

35. simply put, unai emery brings zero tangible value to the club. i’m not saying “unai out” as i know that’s not going to happen this summer but under his tutelage, this club is rudderless. if i’m wrong, i’d love to hear someone’s wag on his direction to a championship.

    there were plenty of games where arsenal played bad football and were getting results despite him, not because of him. the only reason emery brought ozil and ramsey back is because he started getting it from the fans for the awful soccer every week. bringing those two back was a hail mary and it provided a temporary reprieve but arsenal have returned to the emery level.

    simply put, arsenal look like a sinking ship with emery directing the helm. after this season, what player worth their salt is going to want to come to arsenal and play for him?

36. i’ve asked what’s the value of this formation and all i’ve heard is that “it’s not the formation”. sorry, but that’s not what i asked. the question was “how is the 3-4-1-2 a good formation, particularly for arsenal?” this is 7am! i need that knowledge, not the nice comments where you don’t answer questions.

    personally, i think the formation does matter. how you send your guys out makes a statement. if it’s an untypical formation, i.e. 3-4-1-2, you need to dominate. with arsenal closing the season losing to the likes of everton, wolves, and leicester, not to mention being outplayed by crystal palace and brighton and hove in your own back yard, you’re not making a statement to the players. arsenal even got outplayed by ten-man watford. clearly, the players don’t know what emery wants and he says “trust the process”. what process?

    1. My understanding is that 3-4-1-2 let’s Emery play Kolasinac as an attacking wing back without exposing him as a part of a back four. It also provides more insurance for Mustafi’s regular brain-farts. The downside compared to 4-2-3-1 is that we vacate the midfield, (especially problematic as the immobile xhaka is one of the midfielders),allowing us to be pressed off the ball at ease. Our game then degenerates to getting it wide to Kolasinac for a cutback and hoping our two (very good) strikers can capitalise on the crumbs they are fed. This might make sense if we could boast 3 good CBs and two defensively rigours CMs. Except we can’t, and Ozil floats around with no one to combine with. Whether Ozil can still offer more in a different formation or had gone off the cliff is a very pertinent question, but as it currently stands our highest paid player offers next to nothing in our favoured formation :-/

37. Emery gets the benefit of the doubt from me at the moment.

    I started the season by saying that he was my least favourite of all the managerial options.

    Appointing him was a safe choice, a coward’s choice. A bit like an elite version of appointing Mark Hughes or Alan Pardew. You know he’s probably not going to be good enough, and you’ll have to replace him in a couple of years, but you can justify the choice to the board because he has lots of good experience and talks a good game, he knows all the Systems and Tactics, and when he fails you’ll be able to blame him – and it’s all because you don’t want to be blamed for anything yourself.

    This feeling has been reinforced by the departures of Mislintat and Gadzidis and the PR offensive from the C-suite twins, and the lack of resources that are being deployed. The club don’t seem to have faith in him either.

    Perversely all of this means I have a lot of sympathy for Emery, which balances out the dislike of him that Tim also clearly shares. I want him to succeed despite the odds, and despite his limitations.

    We SHOULD have finished third, and with the top two both getting over 90 points that’s a fair result. I do also kind of trust him as a judge of basic talent, and with all his Systems and Tactics he’s an OK manager to be bringing through younger players by giving them a very tight set of instructions to play to.

    I don’t love his brand of football, but I hope that if he gets it working it could be exciting. I want us to play like we did at Spurs, not like how we did at Leicester. I love Auba and Laca up top, I love the potential in our young players, including our defenders, and honestly, glancing around the top leagues, City and Ajax aside I don’t see too many other exciting teams or managers right now.

    1. I know, Klopp, but honestly I don’t love Liverpool. I like Mane, Van Dijk and the fullbacks.

    2. “This is an Arsenal side which has lost its way for what, two months now? Something like that. Which looked exactly how it had looked against Brighton and Crystal Palace and all those games in which, honestly, the notion of pleasure has been taken away from football basically. It’s been extracted surgically by Unai Emery and his players.” – Philippe Auclaire on Emery’s season and the loss to Chelsea.

       1. Yeah I get this, and I share the concern. My worry has always been that the transition from Wenger’s jazz improv collective to Emery’s slick highly produced pop act would not be easy or pretty. System based football has to be controlled, slick and well executed to be interesting, so that the moves you see on the pitch make sense and there’s a kind of music to it. Our football has had little to none of that.

38. As much as I’ve defended Emery this season, I have had to rethink with Tim beating the drum as loudly as he has the past few weeks/months. But this really hit home today:
    “Players are often hung out to dry with the ball. They often don’t have players around them to pass to, leaving them to go it alone. There is very little fluidity to any part of the Arsenal game. We can string together passes, but only when the opponents let us.”
    I saw it a number of times yesterday. AMN and Kola both getting angry about when where they got the ball. Pinned against the sideline with 2 defenders pouncing. It has happened over and over all season. And while they have a legit complaint at times, the system is to blame. When you rely so heavily on FB’s to progress the ball, you make yourself vulnerable. Unless you have highly skilled FB’s. And we don’t. For all of Emery’s “tactical flexibility” the one thing he refused to do from the beginning was to play anything through the middle in the final third. Always up the side. And teams that knew this simply dropped off on our 2 strikers and said, “Your FB’s aren’t good enough to beat us.” And they generally weren’t. When you have unathletic midfielders like ours, who get beaten to the ball, and you have FB’s with weak skills, there is little possibility of creating an attack that’s effective. You need a dynamic, physical playmaking #10 to have any chance. Without Ramsey, we had none. Mkhi would have been better suited to that role than Ozil. The manager has simply forced his “system” down the team’s throat, even when there are no players suited to it. And even when it works, it’s ugly football.
    And while I am willing to point the finger more squarely at Emery, I am also honest about our squad. It’s midtable. Only Auba and Laca even get a second look at a top level club. Literally no one else deserves it.
    So, that’s why Emery will stay. We have 2 years of rebuilding to do. This year will be a hybrid of this year’s roster and some new young players. The following year will bring a new manager and a lot more young players. We won’t do the massive rebuild with Emery. He will preside over another longshot attempt to get back to CL. We will wait for the complete rebuild for the next manager.

    1. I have to say that I’m surprised by the reaction against my position from many corners. I was under the impression that I have been pretty clear in laying out the argument that Emery is awful now for about 3 months. I guess I have to go back and do a #numbers post to show people what I’m seeing and why I want Emery out.

       This is BAD FOOTBALL. It’s like Moyes finishing top four bad.

       1. Tim, you are spot on, Emery should’ve been sacked in the car park at baku and been left to make his own way home, another blog I follow dubbed him ‘el moysie’ ages ago. What keeps me awake at night is that he will appoint shakabagash*te as captain and assemble a team around him next season.

       2. Three reasons you are getting some pushback the way I see it.
          1. Not many have a grasp of stats the way you do, obviously, so Emery’s failure isn’t as pronounced to them.
          2. You’re fudging facts a bit to make your case stronger eg Arsenal didn’t spent close to 100m but rather £68 ( transfermarkt Arsenal’s net spend).
          Chelsea spent twice that while already having had a better squad.
          3. Arsenal fans have been preconditioned to tolerate underwhelming performances from their team without much fuss.

          And everyone knows Emery’s not getting fired – kinda like knowing Trump being a criminal but not getting charged or even impeached for his crimes, so no point expending energy talking about it too much.

          1. I really don’t like Emery, but even I would never compare him to Trump, lol.

             1. Common Shard, you were never going to like anyone after Wenger was let go the way he did, so it was very easy for you to dislike Emery.
                He hasn’t helped his case much to be sure, but now you seem to be on a search and destroy mission scouring for tidbits that might further discredit him.
                But you’re right, he’s no Trump lol

             2. I loved Wenger. Of course no one’s going to live up to that. It’s not why I criticise Emery. I don’t think I’ve even really brought up Wenger when I criticise Unai.

                I criticise Emery based on standards he and Arsenal set when he joined. And while I understand upper management changed midway and certain objectives can change, what Emery has delivered has been such a complete about turn that I find it difficult to believe he ever intended to deliver what he promised anyway. I am now certain he is incapable of it.

39. This whole talk of rebuild really frustrates me. Unless it’s stoically looking to the future now. But we had a good 2-3 year window to work with if it weren’t for a coach who doesn’t know how to attack.

    Our rebuild had started 18 months ago when we shipped out Giroud, Theo, Coq, Gabriel and Atom+Humber. We had a ready made attack with Auba, Laca, Ozil, Ramsey, Miki, and Iwobi. We added quality in midfield and defense. The side was basically good to go for a couple of seasons in which time we could have found new attacking talents, or slowly introduced the youngsters like Nketiah, Nelson, Willock etc.

    The only reason our time frame for a rebuild has been accelerated is because Emery doesn’t know what to do with attack minded players in the centre of the park, and Raul took over and decided to get rid of Ramsey and Ozil.

    So now we need a rebuild. In fact when we withdrew Ramsey’s contract, I figured we’d decided to go all in on the youth (and I was on board) After all, it was one of Emery’s targets to develop and play the youth. But instead of playing ESR, we loaned him out and signed Denis Suarez. When Ramsey was injured, we didn’t play Joe Willock. If we needed wingers we could have played Saka, Amaechi or even Nketiah there.

    So when we say we need a rebuild and Emery needs time, are we talking proper rebuild or short term stuff like Ryan Fraser? I could get behind the first. Put Freddie in charge and play all the kids with Ozil and co. At the least it ought to be fun. The second option is ugh.

    1. “if it weren’t for a coach who doesn’t know how to attack.”

       Correct me if I am wrong… But I think Emery’s Arsenal scored the most amount of goals in the league after City and Liverpool.

       Should be almost impossible for a coach “who doesn’t know how to attack”.

       It’s no secret that the man likes to attack through the wings (not through the center Wenger style) with creative wingers and fullbacks bombing forward. But that is one area where we are lacking in serious options in the squad. Heaven knows he pushed for creative wingers to come help us in January.. and a CB too to help with our defense.
       I suspect he is going to get these players for next season, and you are going to eat your words.

       1. I like your optimism.

       2. His own stated vision is to reduce the attack…. so as to improve the defense. In fact, I think he doesn’t even really know how to coach a defense either, and attacking from the flanks is merely his way of protecting against losing the ball in the middle of the park.

          Wonder what happened to the detailed files he had on players, because if he came in saying this is how he wants to play with the personnel there at Arsenal, he’d have been laughed out of the room by Sven and Ivan.

          He’s ridden on the coattails of the two forwards’ finishing rates, and some dying embers of Wengerball. Sure, we’ll be better at this cross till you drop routine/tactic next season with his purchases. But we’ll be worse for it.

          1. “He’s ridden on the coattails of the two forwards’ finishing rates, and some dying embers of Wengerball.”

             Shard, he’s picked the two strikers in his formation and given them defined instructions and roles.
             And how many of those goals were crafted from Wengerball. If it is such a significantly high percentage enough to discredit Unai’s influence, then I struggle to see how you can (in the same breath) say the football has been atrocious this season.
             Auba’s probably scored more goals from outside the box this season than in his entire career. And I’d bet you’d find more of such ‘anomalies’ if you looked at the other goals we scored this season. How’s that for
             Wengerball?

             “Sure, we’ll be better at this cross till you drop routine/tactic next season with his purchases. But we’ll be worse for it.”

             Why not let next season be the judge of that?

             1. Constant shifting argument this. I asked what should count as a rebuild, but said this was necessitated by Emery not knowing how to attack. Which you took umbrage to, and you said next season will prove me wrong because this season was not his players.

                I don’t think that is what he said in his interview because Arsenal weren’t going to put the team over to a coach whose vision was so drastically opposed to what it was built for.

                That’s the germane point for me. None of this is what Emery had said was his plan. Now he’s already cost us value in the transfer market, destroyed fluidity in attack, made the defense worse, not developed the youth, and missed out on a very gettable top 4 spot in spectacular fashion.

                The argument for him just seems to be, well now he’s here and done this, we might as well let him do what he wants even more.

40. Emery may massively improve, as some do in their second season, with a few of his chosen players. Either that, or he will completely and utterly bomb, or stay the same as his end of season, ie completely and utterly bomb.
    I suspect we will know fairly quickly, if he bombs he may be lucky to see out New Year 2020 let alone the end of his contract. If he doesn’t sort the defending , after his promises, it does not bode well. His seemingly clear, possibly ego driven prioritising of the Europa league over some winnable fixtures in the EPL hasn’t worked must have been noticed by the powers that be, should they chose to notice.
    But, and it is a big but, and I am going to be in a minority I just have a feeling he will start to significantly improve things next season, not sure where it comes from, and anyway, if he doesn’t , he’s toast.
    But don’t rule out an emery exit , especially if he believes a big rebuild is required, and the budget is as limited as suggested, or he gets an offer from elsewhere.

41. Not sure everybody on this site was an Arsenal fan when we bought Jose Antonio Reyes from Sevilla for a then reported club record 17m. He was 19, skillful, strong, and a great goal threat from the left wing. He was set to be a superstar. He frightened ManU enough to conspire to kick him at every opportunity, which contributed to him leaving for Spain, where he still had a great career.

    A wonderful player, who added something to a great team, and scored what I think is my favourite goal in my favourite game. The come from behind 5-3 against Boro which equalled the then unbeaten record of 42 games.

    Shocked and saddened to see that Reyes has died in a car crash aged 35. Such terrible news. RIP Reyes.

42. Terrible news indeed…i remember the excitement when he joined and even if he was kicked out of the english game, he still had some stellar moments….a sad reminder of better times – Rest in peace

43. R.I.P Reyes.

    The arguments on this post are interesting.
    But like Tom pointed out, Ramsey was always an injury risk, so it makes no difference blaming the coach, if the conversation took place indeed. I remember Tim mentioned it on twitter, that he hoped the press asked Ramsey’s opinion for a balanced version of the story. So, I think that situation was not really the worst of Emery.

    You also won’t blame him for Mhiki’s decision, he was right. Yes, the situation was tense, but UEFA made some assurances and anyone can toe the line of whatever they think when they approach this subject. International rows would arise if anything happened to Mhki but he made his decision.

    My main grouse with Emery is, he is doing what he thinks is best for the squad at the moment, he isn’t doing his thing and the results could be better.
    Some players are awful and the squad is poor, the 2 heads come a week before the last major game of the season to state their views and we lost.

    As much as Emery is culpable, Raul is too. Ramsey, Denis Suarez and the January transfer window are evident talking points.

    Emery failed his first target, so I don’t think the 3rd year extension will be active. At the beginning of the season Champions league football was the target and he failed to deliver. Whatever his reasons for abandoning his chosen formation, he failed.

    Secondly he doesn’t trust the younger players, once he has a set of players he trusts, he ignores the rest of the squad. He did same at PSG and he is doing the same now.

    Hoping Edu arrives as technical director to point out these flaws to him, else it will form a basis for his sack in May 2020.

    I raised my fears about Emery’s pandering to the squad rather than building a formidable 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3, after the loss to Westham. It could have been implemented in the January window, but he failed chosing the 3-4-1-2.

    The experiment failed and we can all see what happened.

    Allegri wants a break, next year would be a good time for him to resume as Arsenal’s head coach.

    1. What is it that makes folks believe Massimiliano would’ve done any better than Emery under the circumstances.

       Juventus is Serie A’s PSG by comparison. And Allegri doesn’t play tiki-taka.

       1. His ability to orchestrate attacking football, an eye for talent and a winning mentality. I don’t think tiki-taka can work at Arsenal with the current crop of players.

          1. I meant to say Allegri doesn’t exactly play tiki-taka either.

             My reference to tiki-taka (or entertainment football) was as a point to those who are pissed at Emery’s pragmatic (adaptable or variable is the word actually) style.

             Some time ago I heard people complain that Allegri’s Juventus has played in a less entertaining way than expected, given the number of talent in that Juve squad.

             ” I don’t think tiki-taka can work at Arsenal with the current crop of players.”
             And I agree 110 % percent with the above.

    2. Allegri might be at Chelsea next season with the Sarri going toJuve rumors picking up speed.

       A Hazard- less Chelsea with a transfer ban is still a more attractive proposition for someone like Allegri than the “we only spend what we make “ ( a lie) Arsenal bunch.

44. so sorry to hear about the jose car accident. he had the potential to become an arsenal legend but i don’t think wenger managed him right

    when the henry “black shit” thing happened, wenger should have immediately quashed it directly with vieira and henry. and, for my money, there’s no way he should have been left out of the champions league final. wenger brought him in, declaring him a big game player only to leave him out of the biggest game in arsenal history. jose was brilliant in europe that season and he was a big game player who was built for those moments. shameful. wenger’s decision to play a freddie in decline ahead of reyes is the reason reyes left arsenal.

    r.i.p., jose reyes.

45. btw, do you guys realize the reason the only reason scum are in the final is because of the brilliance of lucas moura. the only reason lucas moura is at tottenham is because of his intense dislike for his cowards former coach, unai emery.

    1. Do you realize that Lacazette was our player of the season, and that he said Unai Emery has made him a better player? Do we want to base your assessment of Emery based on what bitter ex-players have said? Seriously, this is getting ridiculous.

    2. Another way to put might be that Lucas Mora , a talented player that he is, ended up at Tottenham because Emery had to accommodate two new PSG mega signings in Neymar and Mbappe, right?

46. Lucas Mora should’ve started this game period.

    Spurs lose and the Universe aligns itself again.

    The streaker was just about the most entertaining moment of the game.

    1. It was a truly terrible game of football. Thank goodness it was matched by a truly fantastic result.

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