Who do you want Arsenal to sell?
Respondents were asked to rank choice every Arsenal player on the official Arsenal web site with a number between 1-5 showing their priority to sell. A “1” meant top priority for Arsenal to sell and a “5” meant lowest priority.
It’s no surprise that the player almost every Arsenal supporter wants Arsenal to sell is.. Mustafi. 87% of respondents (n=403/463) named Mustafi as a top priority (a 1) to sell.
Sticking with the theme here of players who fans selected as a “1” to sell:
Mustafi = 403
Asano = 251
Jenkinson = 236
Elneny = 226
Özil = 216
Ospina = 215
Mkhitaryan = 165
Some of these are “low hanging fruit”: Asano, Jenkinson, Elneny, and Ospina haven’t proven themselves as Arsenal quality and have either been sent out on loan for most of their careers or dropped from the Arsenal starting lineup. The surprise for me is Özil’s high “#1 sell” rate. Ozil deserves his own section and we will do that below.
In the “keep” section are also a number of players that weren’t a surprise. Players who scored the most “5’s” (fans were least interested in selling) were:
Bellerin = 259
Leno = 236
Torreira = 233
Holding = 225
Lacazette = 219
Guendouzi = 193
Maitland-Niles = 176
Aubameyang = 170
The Lacazette and Aubameyang numbers are especially interesting given the rumors about Arsenal potentially selling Auba for £80m to China. Lacazette is also supposedly on the table and if both players were sold that could make for a very difficult summer for Arsenal supporters. If Arsenal sold both players and got in £120-140m they would still need to find a striker (or two) who can pick up the slack.
Aubameyang scored 31 goals and provided 8 assists last season. My man Lacazette scored 19 goals and provided 13 assists. So that’s at least 50 goals going out the door.
Now I’m not a “just stats” guy. I’m the first to admit that these two players might not be best suited to play with each other in the same team – which I say knowing full well that they enjoy playing together, but you know that I mean; the partnership looks odd at times. I’m also fully aware that these two players are getting older and that the whole age profile of the team looks like a problem.
This answer on this survey, to me, shows the importance of getting this right. I think supporters could be convinced to sell one or both players but the club needs to get the right guy in or risk testing patience. I mean, to be just kind of absurd: if we sold both and got in Mbappe, I think fans would be ok. But if we sell Auba and get in Kevin Gameiro I think supporters will be very upset. And even if we get in an off the radar player, an Eduardo-type, he will have to hit the ground running. There will be little patience for Emery and Arsenal if we aren’t scoring goals next season and we sold off our best goal scorer.
The “Meh” players
So, those were the players that respondents wanted in/out in a pretty obvious way. But there were also a handful of players who you were more ambivalent about. Here is what a graph looks like for leave (Mustafi’s chart is almost entirely blue) and stay (Bellerin, Auba, and Lacazette are almost entirely purple for stay):
Respondents seem less excited to sell but certainly not interested in keeping Granit Xhaka. Xhaka had 193/463 people choose 1 or 2 for priority to sell and his average score for this question was a 2.06. This matches what we see later when I ask directly”Xhaka: keep or sell”, 68% said sell.
That matches what I have seen on social media and in the blog comments lately. As the the season unfolded I saw fewer people telling other people that they “don’t understand football if you don’t like Xhaka” and more silence.
Another surprise was Iwobi. People have complained vociferously about Iwobi this season and yet the respondents here put him as a low sell priority: 227/463 said he should be a 4 or a 5 on the sell priority.
I suspect that low rating is because he played such a strange role at Arsenal this season. Not really a wide forward but instead deployed as a player whose job it was to feed Kolasinac. With his dribbling and through balls, I think Iwobi is ideally suited to a forward role in a 433 but whether we will ever see that formation from Emery is unclear.
Who should Arsenal buy?
Switching gears a bit, I asked respondents to rank which positions Arsenal should buy this summer with a 1 meaning highest priority and a 5 meaning lowest priority. Their rankings were fairly straightforward:
Since the graphic is small, I’ll just say that the number one choice is center back and then from there it’s left back, b2bmfer, and right wing:
Center back left = 279 (Replace Mustafi)
Box-to-Box MFer = 197 (Replace Ramsey)
Left back = 197 (make Kolasinac a backup)
CB right = 192 (replace Koscielny)
Right wing = 144
Left wing = 131
The only position that surprised me was left back. Based on the priority to keep question, Kolasinac seems to be rated as a fairly good back-up option at left back but it’s clear that fans really want a top quality, starting left back at Arsenal, rating that as equally as important to replacing Ramsey.
Interesting that respondents also seem to want more CBs at Arsenal, both left and right, despite the fact that the club already has Sokratis, Koscielny, Mavropanos, Holding, Chambers, and Mustafi. I think fans understand that there are no lack of bodies but that there may be a lack of quality in that group.
The Ozil Problem
Similar to Xhaka, for years now any criticism of Mesut Özil has been met with the “you don’t understand football” retort. For a while the anti-Ozil-criticism even reached the levels of “imagine thinking that this man should leave Arsenal”. But after two plus seasons of sub-par performances (punctuated by some really beautiful goals) the worm seems to have turned against Ozil.
When asked sell or keep, 83% of respondents want to sell Ozil:
Mkhitaryan’s another player with a similarly high “sell” rate.
I don’t get the sense that these results come from a hatred of the players. I think there’s another problem. An almost exact same number of people identified the main problem with Ozil – his salary:
And just to drive the point home, I asked the question in a third way: would you want to keep Ozil if he earned less, £120k a week, and respondents were much more excited for keeping him at that price:
What these results show is that fans are aware that Özil is a super talent but also that it is important to supporters that their team gets value for the salary that they are paying. Players running down their contracts (ahem, Alexis, Rabiot, Ramsey, etc.) either need to find a way to structure those deals so that they aren’t hung with the “earning £350k a week” albatross or they need to be actually worth that contract. No amount of cold logic about “but if you include transfer fees, the team is paying X player that much per week” is going to convince supporters.
And for Özil himself, this summer is shaping up to be framed as a battle between Özil and Emery and when I asked that question, Özil loses. Maybe it’s unfair to pit them against each other but that has been the narrative all season. Emery is hardly a fan favorite but in a choice between the two, Özil loses.
Kroenke makes us kranky
I doubt Stan Kroenke cares about my little blog and this little poll, and it’s probably not a surprise, but respondents really don’t like him.
Look at his approval rating, it’s 1.7%. That’s 8 people out of 463 that said Kroenke in. And I’d be willing to bet 7 of those 8 voted that way just to take the piss.
He’s not a great owner and I’m no fan of Kroenke. I’ve said many times and in many ways that he’s only interested in growing the company in the way that all American sports franchises grow: through the accumulation of value by being part of something larger that is accumulating value. In other words, as the League grows more valuable, Arsenal grow more valuable.
His philosophy is modest growth. If the club generates money, they will put that back into the club, but they aren’t going to do an Abramovich and launder their filthy lucre through player purchases. The mode is slow growth and along the way if they strike it just right, they might win a few trophies. It’s textbook high school capitalism and very much in line with his real estate/sports holdings.
His crime among supporters seems to be not putting any of his own money in. Which I think we all understand to mean that he’s not really a fan of Arsenal. We put money in to the club. He doesn’t. He’s not a supporter. He is just the landlord. And I think that’s a pretty fair assessment of his time at Arsenal.
That said, he should be careful not to drop into slumlord territory. In other words, if he wants to just be a landlord he needs to hire an outstanding property management team or his property will fall into disrepair and no one will want to live there!
Since Kroenke doesn’t take an active role himself he needs to make sure that his managers are doing the best that they can and I think some question marks are starting to appear:
Sanllehi – When I asked what kind of job folks think he’s done for Arsenal (on a scale of 1-5 with 1 being terrible) most of the respondents gave him a 3 (n=241/463) but his results are heavily shaded between a 2 and a 3 with the average score of 2.5. That’s not great.
Mislintat has the opposite graph – most respondents gave him a 4 (n=240/463) but opposite to Sanllehi he was heavily shaded upward and had an average of 3.7.
I didn’t ask any questions about Josh Kroenke because no one knows what he really does. I also dropped the ball and didn’t ask about Gazidis. I probably should have done.
It has also been suggested that I revisit this question about Mislintat and Sanllehi after this summer. I will probably do that, along with a follow up on several other questions right before the start of the season. That’s when I think I’ll include “the Gazidis question.”
By the way, the answer about Kroenke in/out changed significantly when I asked if it would matter who he sold to.
Suddenly, the majority would rather have Kroenke. I think all of this shows that what supporters want from Kroenke is simply to be more involved in the club. Maybe put some money in, but supporters are smart, we know that you can’t change a giant club like Arsenal overnight. I think it would be just as good to show the supporters that the club are building toward a future where we can challenge for the top trophies. That means hiring backroom staff, coaches, and players who align with a club philosophy and show that the club are moving in a positive direction.
Let’s see in August
I also asked how many players fans think Arsenal will buy and how much money (gross, not net) that they think Arsenal will spend.
It looks to me like most supporters are realistic and expect fewer than 6 players this year and a gross spend of somewhere south of £80m.
Six new players aligns with the earlier question about which positions Arsenal supporters most want the club to buy.
Emery’s support is divided
Respondents chose Emery over Ozil in the head to head but the coach’s support wanes when asked whether the club should sell or keep.
A tiny majority, a difference of just 5 people, want to keep Emery at Arsenal. That’s a surprise and I am starting to wonder how he might fair against some other options? Like “Emery v. Sarri”, “Emery v. Allegri”, or even “Emery v. Wenger”. I didn’t ask a single question about Wenger in this survey and I regret it. Especially because of this next question:
I would be willing to bet you money if I ask that question and replace Ozil (which I included as a joke) with Wenger the result would be different. I believe that so much, I asked it on twitter. I’ll publish those results in the comments (because I’m a jerk like that!)
Conclusions
Not much to conclude extra here at the end. I might re-run this survey after the summer transfers are over.
“No amount of cold logic about “but if you include transfer fees, the team is paying X player that much per week” is going to convince supporters.”
YET!
It’s just new, this whole leaving on a free thing. But you can already see the fans coming around to the PoV promoted by the club that the club needs to cut costs. Gone are the calls to spend some of F. King’s money. It’s not just related to Ozil either. Auba and Laca going for 70-80m is enough to get fans excited. This was unimaginable a couple of years ago.
So, yeah, fans will get used to the logic of overall spend. The focus on a player’s salary has always seemed driven by a kind of jealousy to me. It becomes an excuse to treat them poorly as people too. So, I don’t like it.
It’s very simple for me:
We are headed down into a period of mediocrity that will continue until Kroenke either sells or invests to bring us up to the level of also-rans which will continue until we sink back into mediocrity.
That’s it. That’s the entire future of this club under his ownership. If I could stop supporting Arsenal I probably would but I can’t. It’s an addiction now and I’m hooked come what may.
Arsenal’s days as a “Big Club” are under inevitable decline under KSE. Worldwide interest and fan base will gradually diminish as year after year of trophy-less seasons continue and as Anfield 89, the Invincibles season and the FA Cups under Wenger fade into distant memory.
And no, I don’t want instead of KSE, some “shady” owner, or a Russian oligarch or an oil shiekh or whoever passes for an unsavoury or unscrupulous owner in the 21st century. I want someone who knows and cares for the club, its history and wants success stemming from that understanding.
And I’m sad because that’s most likely never going to happen.
It’s always that “unless” that will keep me going.
I’m projecting a bit here, but I honestly don’t think trophies are why we’ll decline. It didn’t seem to affect us too badly during the #TrophyDrought. I maintain that Arsenal’s appeal (and the genius of it from a marketing perspective) was about its history and culture. The ‘values’ they always talked about, and tried to live up to.
I think that’s basically out. Personally, if I really see no trace of it remaining, I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep the same bond to the club.
Glad though that most fans still don’t want a truly shady owner. I’m ok with Kroenke’s style of ownership. In fact I’d rather his son had stayed hands off. It seems to me that most structural problems came up around the time he joined the board and started to take an interest. If nothing else, it made the club more political.
Dude, that’s fine with me too but what does “hands off” really mean? We all want it to mean something good, not bad, as in my dystopian vision above.
My great fear is that “hands off” is code for “if the club can’t generate enough income to buy players, build for the future, etc. then f%$k it, we ride it down until it’s time to sell”.
Hands off = First do no harm
I think there’s a happy medium between Kroenke and corrupt oligarch/oil sheikh.
Look at the FSG guys that own Liverpool. They seem pretty interested not only in driving a profit, but in sporting success. And outside of their initial purchase, and an expansion of Anfield, I don’t think they have poured in a lot of investment. Kroenke doesn’t have to go to the extreme of Man City or Abramovich. He just needs to get closer to FSG, and hire someone who screws up less than it’s starting to appear that Gazidis did.
I’m all for it. Your lips to Stan’s ears. Fenway Sports Group could be an ostensible model for the kind of ownership we need. Klopp finished 8th in his first season and now look where they are. But they have a manager head and shoulders above Emery and that counts huge.
Sorry to hijack this post. It was all about the survey which is interesting…let’ get back to that.
I think survey results make a lot of sense and fit quite well with my own views. Mustafi is mistake prone and when a CB makes a mistake its such a killer. Jenkinson, Elneny and Asano are all meh and probably need to find lower table or championship teams if they hope to get any minutes.
With regard to Ozil I don’t understand how anyone who watched our games can doubt that his ability to influence the games has faded as he as aged especially in the last 1 1/2 seasons under both Wenger and Emery. His stats certainly add objective evident which further supports what our eyes have seen. Father Time wins the battle against every player and once a player starts to fade it does not reverse itself so the overwhelming probably is he will become even less effective as he grows older over the next 2 years. If we can offload his wage it would free up slightly more then $18M/year and the significance of that goes without saying. Unfortunately, I think its vey unlikely we can find anyone who will be willing to buy him or take him on loan unless we subsidize a significant percentage of his wage.
With regard to Kronke I would trade him in a heartbeat for Liverpool’s owners. That said I don’t think he has been as bad as many think. As you pointed out in the post a couple days ago we have spent money. Part of the problem has been questionable/bad decisions in the latter half of this decade starting with Wenger/Gazidis and continuing with our new front office brain trust. I am not suggesting Kronke is a good owner but he would not look quite as bad if our football people had done a better job with resource and contract management and done a better job of squad building with the money they did spent
With regard to Emery I think his first season has raised a lot of uncomfortable questions and raised some big red flags, especially on the defensive end. . If anyone had known prospectively we would concede 51 goals and look so disorganized then he would never have been hired. I understand fully why some would suggest that we need a new manager ASAP but I think we should give him one more year. However, if we don’t see significant improvement on the defensive end I will be voting Emery out on next years survey.
Emery didn’t win away from home the whole season in La liga at a club I’d consider on par with Arsenal. That was a sign that he could have major problems with his defence and I wasn’t surprised he wasn’t able to improve us.
I think an interesting survey choice would be have been Kroenke selling to a homophobic dictator willing to spend a substantial amount of their own money on club transfers. Would have loved to see the results of that.
As stated the choice was between bad and super bad. And, bad won.
It’s not outright stated, and maybe I’m wrong, but I kind of thought that that was what was being implied by Tim’s question.
Would you prefer a relatively benign owner who doesn’t put money into the club or a owner who has a terrible history/outlook regarding human rights who doesn’t put money into the club is, hopefully, not much of a choice.
Then again, there’s probably and interesting/depressing graph to be made that plots the threshold of financial investment required to change each of us from (hopefully) ‘no’ when it comes to owners with terrible human rights records to ‘ok.’
This is what’s sad. All Middle Eastern and Russian investors are viruntely homophobic.
WHAT? You got a problem with that, you f&$king faggot?
That’s the mentality all of us good people have to deal with. I’m looking at you, f&$king fag.
What happened to Arsenal’s legendary cash reserves? The powder that was being kept dry? The 200m or so that we heard about two years ago? We know Kroenke borrowed money to purchase Arsenal and he’s highly leveraged… now that there’s no transparency with the financials, did he raid the coffers?
My animus towards Kroenke is the lack of vision, the lack of care. I’m not sure how one of the ten richest clubs in the world (supposedly) has only 40m to spend on transfers and salary.
We bought Auba, Mkhi, Torreira, Leno, Sokratis and Guenduzi. Ozil’s salary also took a big chunk along with Wenger’s golden handshake.
The problem is we lost too many players on a free. Jack, Ramsey, Welbeck and *Cech were first teamers and not getting a fee for them is a huge financial blow.
Auba, Miki and Ozil’s new contract came on exchange basically. No added cost in terms of either transfers or wages,
Giroud, Walcott, Coquelin, Debuchy and Alexis went off the books. Then in the summer we got Per, Jack and Santi’s wages off the books too.
The Coutinho sale seems to have made it trendy to sell a star, but they got massively lucky. Part of the reason they got lucky was that they had already bought Salah. If they’d been thinking of selling before buying they wouldn’t have got the price they did on Salah in the Neymar window.
The point I think Jack is making, is that financial blow or not, we have the ability to absorb it and spend money on buying and retaining whoever we wish. IF we wish. Which evidently, we don’t.
We all make mistakes before we imorove; sometines the same mistakes untiole times. Here’s hoping Emery id intelligent enough to recognise his defensive woes and improve and get rid of his bad habits – a la ‘the Cech Crumple’.
Even though I am Emery out, i still feel at his age he could improve as a manager.
Feck me, i never seem to be able to get my ‘reply button’ right. Apologies.
Oooh! Here’s an idea for a game. The main objective for hiring Emery – according to Gadzidis – was to make our existing assets (sorry, I mean “players”) more valuable (sorry, I mean “better”). Let’s look at the change in nominal player values on Transfermarkt for the last 12 months:
Player Jun18 Jun19 Change Emery Impact?
Auba 67.5 67.5 0 0
Laca 49.5 58.5 +9 +9
Iwobi 13.5 22.5 +9 +9
Mkhi 31.5 27.0 -4.5 -4.5
Ozil 45.0 31.5 -13.5 -20
Ramsey 40.5 36.0 -13.5 -13.5
Guen 6.3 27.0 +20.5 +20.5
Xhaka 36.0 45.0 +9 +4
Torreira 36.0 49.5 +13.5 +13.5
AMN 6.3 6.3 0 +5
Bellerin 36.0 36.0 0 0
Monreal 11.7 9.0 -2.7 0
Kola 16.2 18.0 +1.8 0
Kosc 13.5 9.0 -4.5 0
Papa 18.0 18.0 0 0
Mustafi 22.5 27.0 +4.5 0
Holding 6.3 10.8 +4.5 0
Cech 2.7 2.3 -0.4 0
Leno 19.8 22.5 +2.7 0
TOTAL +35 +22.5
According to TM that’s a net increase in value of the squad of +35M which is OK but not spectacular.
I’m making an estimate of Emery’s impact in the last column, based on the following:
– Most of those changes of +-4% look like automatic ones based on player’s change in age rather than any significant improvement or decline in the last 12 months, so I’m zeroing these out.
– I’m surprised that a) Xhaka went up so much, b) AMN didn’t go up at all, and c) that Ozil only went down by 13.5M. So I adjusted these values.
– I’m also not at all sure Ramsey should have dropped by 13.5M but I’m letting that stand, and I’m letting Mustafi’s value stand as well as he’s about the same as last season.
This gives Emery’s estimated impact on value of the squad at +22.5M, which pretty much boils down to the fact that he brought through Guendouzi. It’s not looking awesome.
Ok so the columns did not come out there, sorry
I like the idea! But if I could add some thoughts:
I agree that his job was to increase the value of the players, but to do so for the club. To bring profits. So, look at it from a profit/loss position rather than player valuation.
Auba is reportedly worth £80m. That’s a £10m profit.
As of writing this, Ramsey isn’t Emery’s “fault” so, it’s not fair to tax Emery for loss/gain.
Ozil’s value has plummeted so far that there are serious rumors of Arsenal loaning him out and paying someone to take him. Honestly, I think the club would take zero dollars for Ozil. Meaning – just don’t make us pay him. But! Ozil is a fully amortized player. So this is a wash.
Mkhitaryan is the same. We aren’t getting a penny when we loan/sell him. But what’s his loss here? Nothing? Seems like it’s the same as Ozil to me.
Lacazette +9
Iwobi +9 – Iwobi and Kolasinac are two players I think Emery has improved.
Guendouzi +20 – That seems high could we really get £30m for him? Also, how much did Emery add here and how much was this just Sven finding a bargain?
Xhaka +4 – Arsenal supporters hearing that there is interest from Inter at £55m have offered to drive him to the airport. I think if we are going to sell him it will be closer to £40m.
Torreira – 0 – No one is paying us £50m for this player
AMN – +13 – He’s not been great but he’s English and he’s fast.
Bellerin – No change because of the injury but the man had 5 assists in 18 games. I can see Emery hugely increasing the value of our fullbacks.
Monreal – unsellable. Not particularly Emery’s fault. Dude just got older.
Kolasinac – 5 assists in 22 games is good stuff. +3
Koscielny – 0
Sokratis – 0
Mustafi – -12 – if we can get £15m for Mustafi we will be lucky
Holding + 5
Cech – 0
Leno +5
I got +66m
Profit/loss is interesting too, but I was focusing only on changes to valuations this season. So I think you have to include Ozil and Mkhi’s decline in value. If Emery has taken Ozil from a player worth 40M last summer to 0M today that’s a catastrophe, no? Or maybe I’m not understanding the amortization thing.
On the other hand, you’re right I think that Ramsey should be a net zero. If anything Emery increased his value. TM had him at – 4.5 (I made a mistake by putting in -13.5)
On the others I broadly agree. You have AMN worth more than me, and I have Mustafi worth more than you so they basically cancel. Torreira I think has to have gone up in value due to his improved profile and reputation but maybe less than TM claim, so maybe +5. Guendouzi the same, maybe only +15?
Selling players and moving out high wage players whose ability to influence the game no longer enough justifies their wages and then using that money to bring in new players is a huge part of the strategy Liverpool and Chelsea used. We probably need to be even more creative then those 2 teams.
I was a huge fan of Ox and I liked Walcott but the money we got by selling them almost paid for Aubameyang and clearly that was good business. That has to serve as a model for how we operate going forward.
Hopefully our club will learn from its mistakes and make better decisions with resource and squad management going forward. If they don’t we are in big trouble.
Chelsea, having beaten us to a 3rd place we should easily have taken and in the Europa League final, has just earned 150m GBP for their best player.
I’m insanely jealous, frustrated and disillusioned all at once.
F***ety f***.
Everyone in the post only know how to blame the manager when the team is not performing well to win a game. In modern football sometimes you win and also sometimes you loose. Posting and talking is easy and if you are so good you should take over his place and be the head coach. Why nobody complain about the mess that Arsene Wenger has left behind ???
” The mess that Winger left behind ” When they were going 22 games unbeaten, it was because “Wenger as lost it” and doesn’t know how to coach defense. Now they exploded and it was mess that Wenger left behind. When will some arsenal fans get real and admit not even Pep can get arsenal into this CL with this kind of investment in the playing squad. The premier league as changed. Winger was a victim of his own success
Dude, no disrespect but your comment is literally about how none of us have the right to criticize the manager….which ends by asking us why we don’t complain about the former manager.
Either we’re allowed to criticize the work of managers or we’re not. You can’t have it both ways.
Don’t be.
Hazard less Chelsea is a weaker club £150m transfer fee notwithstanding.
This isn’t anything like the highway robbery Pool pulled on Barca with the Coutinho deal almost for the same money Klopp used to pave their way to the top.
Hazard won’t be easily replaced ,if at all.
How do you replace a top three at best, and top five player in the world at his worst anyway..
But if I’m gonna be a di#k about it , what happened to the trend of top players running down their contracts and moving on a free to pocket huge signing bonuses and $hit , mr Wenger?
I guess that “ trend “ only worked at Arsenal.
Alllllrighty then!
who arsenal bring in or how much they make in wages doesn’t matter much if emery’s the manager.
look at the players psg had when emery got there and those player’s wages. amazingly, he managed to coach that uber-talented team OUT of winning ligue 1, while systemically inducing locker room drama. at sevilla, he managed to go an entire campaign without winning a single away game. he’s done the same this year, coaching arsenal out of a shoe-in top 3 finish that everyone predicted arsenal to secure. that’s downright disgraceful!
you guys know that i’m always eager to discuss what players arsenal should bring in. sorry boys, but i could give two poops who arsenal bring in this summer. it simply doesn’t matter if emery’s the manager. all he’s going to do is deny conventional wisdom in an endeavor to prove how smart he is. it’s why most of his big players didn’t like playing for him. the problem is this guys isn’t that smart. he’s a fuc*king clown! any success arsenal had this season, or that psg had when he was there, is despite him, not because of him.
i really don’t understand how you guys can focus on anything other than the manager. arsenal could bring in messi and this guy will find a way to blow it. he’d say something stupid like “messi doesn’t defend enough”.
emery won’t get any money from kronke. after this season, would you trust emery with your money if you were arsenal owner?
Stop blaming Unai Emery because this is his first season taking over AFC and with a limited Budget to operate you expect him to perform miracles ???
No. I expect him to coach the team to play competent defense at the very least, and maybe not use the fullbacks as the prime creative force in his remix version of 90s football. Boring and a misuse of the talent in the squad.
…limited budget? arsenal spent nearly £100 million last summer and emery had an entire pre-season to get his point across to players.
i didn’t expect emery to perform miracles. i expected him to manage the resources he did have to ensure arsenal play good football.
“he’s done the same this year, coaching arsenal out of a shoe-in top 3 finish that everyone predicted arsenal to secure. that’s downright disgraceful!”
And by everyone I assume you mean no one , which in fact was the case before the season’s start, right?
Or are you referring only to the end of the season run of away( mostly) games , which , if you had paid any attention to how Arsenal fared in over the course of last two seasons, you probably would’ve known we’d lose.
I’m with you on being meh about who goes and who stays, and who they eventually bring in , but let’s not make $hit up to create false narratives.
what are you talking about, false narratives? in may, arsenal were locked in 3rd place with an easy schedule. everyone, pundits alike, had predicted arsenal would finish in the top 4. just like the atlanta falcons blew it in the super bowl after being up 28-3 in the 3rd quarter, emery managed to get down on his knees and blow it for arsenal.
under emery’s management, arsenal failed to beat everton, leicester city, and wolves. they were lucky to beat 10-man watford and only needed to beat either crystal palace or brighton & hove at home and they did neither. there’s no false narrative there, brother. those are facts.
…and it mattered not how arsenal had faired over the previous two seasons. this is a new season with a new manager and an opportunity to return to the champions league at stake. i’m willing to bet my house that wenger, under those circumstances, wouldn’t have screwed that up.
You would probably end up homeless if you did 🙂
Look, I don’t wish to revisit the nightmare of the end of the season and you’ve made your feelings known about Emery , but I never thought Arsenal had the easiest run in for a top four and I said this much at the time.
And I’m sure Emery didn’t tell Xhaka to to duck under the Wolves ‘ free kick for their first ,or bring Albion player down for a make up call pen after Monreal had dived for Arsenal’s in the first half.
my bad…..apparently it’s stan kroenke, not kronke; i’ve been spelling it wrong all this time.
it’s easy to talk about the errors that mustafi and xhaka made. while those issues are problematic, they’re not biggest problem for me. the biggest problem is arsenal not only lost those games in the run in on the scoreboard, they continually got their asses kicked on the pitch.
that’s not down to a xhaka or mustafi error. that’s on emery. he’s either failed to teach the players what he wants from them on the pitch, or failed to convince them that they can win with his approach. these players aren’t stupid and he can’t just expect them to blindly follow him when they’ve played some beautiful football in some much more entertaining systems for other coaches. he’s got to be charming to convince them of his way, especially in tough games. being a manager is not just x’s and o’s. there needs to be a bit of charisma and personality there.
Yeah he seems ill suited to manage the people at a big club. Tactics don’t exist only in the theoretical. If Wenger hadn’t got Tony Adams and the rest to buy into his philosophy, instead to just get rid and blow up the team, this club would not be where it is.
What exactly does Emery take responsibility for? Not the results apparently, since ‘that’s a mess left behind by Wenger’. Not the end of season collapse because that’s on the players. Not the quality of the football, because they are not his players. Not the contract decisions because that’s on the committee (who put it on Wenger again). Not even for playing a player in the red zone.
So what is it that Emery actually does?
very interesting take on wenger not “messing with the back five”. it was, clearly, the strength of arsenal when he got there. wenger only enhanced those players as athletes but he still allowed them to do what they were good at; more importantly, he didn’t try and tell them how to do what they were already good at.
I find hilarious that you would now bring up the red zone thing after defending Wenger to the hilt all those years against the same accusations.
Shard, have you got no shame my good sir?!?!? 🙂
I have no problem with Emery playing the player despite any data. That’s his prerogative. I find it problematic that he then decided to blame Ramsey for the injury. As if he (Emery) were the voice of reason but Ramsey wanting to play gave him no choice. That’s stupid and, as is a pattern with him, avoiding responsibility. It’s weak.
Also Tom, your arguments are increasingly in bad faith. I’m about tired of you attacking me as a hypocrite, by misrepresenting what I say and only viewing it through a ‘oh but Wenger’ lens. Smiley or no smiley, it’s annoying when that’s your standard response.
Shard, I actually do blame Emery for some of the Arsenal players injuries but unlike you, I’m inclined to cut him some slack on account of this being his first season with players , in a new league he’s not familiar with.
The chances of two players suffering from ACL tears in the same season are so remote that the only logical explanation is negligence, and if I recall correctly Holding’s minutes prior to his injury backed my assumption up.
Of course I bring up Wenger to push back on some of your criticism of Emery because you were de facto Wenger’s bigger fan and the man could do absolutely no wrong .
Remember Ramsey pulling a hamstring in the league opener v Liverpool after telling Wenger at half time he wasn’t right ,and Wenger still had him go out there.
Did you criticize Wenger after that?
Of course not.
As for your feelings getting hurt over the hypocrite thingy, sorry pal but if the shoe fits…..
Here’s a little test to see whether one might be a hypocrite or not, feel free to take it , or not.
If you had called Alonso a murderer who should’ve spent time in prison for his involvement in the vehicular manslaughter in which a young woman( his passenger) died, what would be your position if it were your son driving in an identical case?
But perhaps that’s too personal for your taste, ok then , how about Reyes killing himself and his cousin in a high speed car crash.
Is that worse or better than what Alonso did?
But here’s the real reason I post the way I do sometimes.
I don’t take myself too seriously and as a consequence I sometimes take a pi$$ , as the Brits would say, so no offense buddy.
Except Tom, I am telling you that you are being offensive. It’s not about not taking yourself too seriously, it’s that that’s your go to ‘joke’ response. It’s tiresome and annoying, and it’s intellectually dishonest.
Because once again. I didn’t criticise Emery for Ramsey getting injured.
I also didn’t call Alonso a murderer. I said the guy had ended up killing someone, got away with it because of being rich, and to me, he didn’t seem too contrite over it. He caused Bellerin a concussion and then was joking about it prior to the FA Cup final. The two aren’t really on the same level, but if that’s his idea of a joke, I figure it says something about him.
Not sure why that is relevant though. Bringing up a hypothetical or two, and Reyes dying (the circumstances of which I have not read) to try to prove me a hypocrite and win a blog argument. I mean.. whatever dude.. Go on not taking the pi$$ if that’s your thing. Just don’t expect me to go along with your ‘jokes’.
Killer, that’s the term you used describing Alonso,
and you said he got off too easy.
What the Bellerin play has to do with your assessment of the case I’m sure I don’t know.
Reyes was speeding going over 130m/h , lost control of the car that flipped over repeatedly ,went off-road and slid 200 meters while bursting in flames.
There, you’re all caught up.
Was Reyes a killer then too, even though he did play for Arsenal and never elbowed Bellerin?
Here’s my point though,
You went from absolute Wenger worshipping to absolute Emery bashing and its ridiculous.
But it’s not just down to Mustafi and Xhaka.
What chances do you have as a manager against any club when you literally gift them goals in bunches
Between Mavro , Jenko, and Mustafi diabolical defending even Pep would’ve lost that game against Palace. Oh, wait he actually did.
What tactical mastermind can legislate for what Leno did against Wolves?
Sure, some games were clearly badly set up from get go and Emery should take the blame eg Leicester, but even then can you blame Emery for AMN stupid red card?
The fact he shakes hands with the guy who got him set off makes me question his suitability at this level.
i understand your point about players making huge gaffes but that’s part of the game. everyone makes mistakes. it’s just minimized with attacking players because their mistakes don’t typically have a catastrophic consequences like defenders and goal keepers tend to. however, that’s not my point.
my point is it’s one thing for arsenal to lose because a player made a mistake. it’s quite another to be so comprehensively beaten on a regular basis, particularly away from home. even in the games arsenal won, they didn’t always look like a good team; merely a team that got a result on a day.
in the fall, i compared emery to mourinho. now, i have to change that stance. i believe unai emery has neither the tactical nous, nor the charisma of jose mourinho. can emery make a liar out of me? we’ll see.
A few weeks ago I referred to him as a watered down Mourinho. Subscribing to a similar philosophy (defense first, creating conflict, system over player) Not as nasty, but not as good either.
+1
it seems you and i are on the same exact page with emery.
Hey Tom,
What’s ridiculous is you think a guy who came here like yesterday ought to have the same trust and respect that someone earned over 20 years.
But it has nothing to do with Wenger. Go back and look at the season’s start and you’ll find I was defending Emery too.
Notice how you never actually argue on the actual points I make. Your response in whatever tone of ‘not taking yourself too seriously’ you choose, is invariably ‘You hate Emery cos Wenger, you hypocrite hyuck hyuck’
I know you are more intelligent than that. I can only conclude this is intentionally low brow on your part. I’m sure it won’t matter to you, but I’m just letting you know that I don’t find it in good humour or spirit. Rather the opposite.