What’s next for Arsenal?

Unai Emery’s time at Arsenal is over and it ended in a way that is probably going to be remembered as emblematic of his time at the club. Needing a win to get the players, fans, and everyone else on board his project, he named a starting lineup with four center backs, one of whom he deployed in the defensive midfield role.

It feels like as things got worse for Emery, as the criticism mounted, he retreated into his default position which was defensive. Ironically, if he’d have gone against his instincts – if he’d have just played players in their natural positions, if he’d had thought of attacking rather than just straight up defending – I think we would have kept him on. But he just couldn’t do it.

And what a mess that last lineup was. Not just for having four center backs but playing David Luiz in the defensive midfield role. I understand where he got the idea – Jose Mourinho used to play David Luiz there – but if he’d done his homework he’d have known that David Luiz is not cut out to play DM. When Mourinho did it, I used to laugh at how clearly incapable David Luiz was of playing the right passes. I remember some performances in the midfield where he would complete sub-70% of his passes. That’s simply unacceptable from a DM. Yesterday he was just running around, chasing shadows, looking lost, and made just 50% of his passes.

I mean, who does that? Who plays a center back in the DM role, after he’s been proven many times over incapable of playing that position? And who does that WHEN HE HAS A DM ON THE BENCH??? He could have even played Chambers in the midfield, he’s at least got more recent experience in the role – not that he’s actually very good at it. David Luiz last played DM in like 2014, a 3-1 loss to Atletico. He completed 70% of his passes that day.

Who does that? We are often told by people who don’t like any criticism of the players, the coaches, the owners, the club, that we aren’t allowed to criticize these people because they are professionals and they know better than us. “How many trophies have you won???” they say, I’m sorry but I never want to hear that garbage again. Not only is it an obvious logical fallacy (appeal to authority) but it fantasizes that these people are infallible when they very clearly are not. They are people.

I feel sorry for Emery in that regard. There are times when we are all out of our depth, or feel out of our depth in certain jobs. I bet he worked hard to improve things, I’m sure he wanted to do his best, but I’m also sure that this wasn’t the right job for him.

Which brings me to the real problem. I don’t harbor any ill feelings toward Emery but I wonder how he got this job and how he kept the job after last season. A lot of folks said from the start that he had a poor record even managing in Spain when he won the Europa League multiple times. And there were also the odd bits about him and picking fights with players at PSG. I’m no genius but even I saw that he wasn’t cutting it last year. The constant lineup changes, the fights with Ozil, playing his best players out of position, playing ultra-defensive and yet still not playing very good defense. And the attacking football.. man that was bad.

In that regard, the board – or more appropriately Raul Sanllehi – has a lot to answer for. I suppose they could try to blame the Emery hire on Gazidis but they supposedly made that decision “unanimously”. And let’s be clear what decision they made: they interviewed Max Allegri and chose Unai Emery.

Perhaps there were mitigating circumstances, perhaps Allegri told them he would only take the job if they agreed to spend $200m on new players or something. Though if that’s the case, they did actually spend the $200m on new players. We don’t know what happened in that interview room.

We do know what’s happened since they hired Emery. Sanllehi has purchased $200m worth of players. He’s brought in Edu. He’s pushed out one of the most well-respected talent scouts in football (Mslintat). He rescinded Ramsey’s contract offer. He’s authorized a very public spat with Mesut Ozil in order to try to force him out of his contract. There was the thing with Koscielny, which I still think was uglier on the club’s side than many believe. He’s been quoted saying that he trusts his Rolodex over data – and there are plenty of people who assure me that Arsenal’s stats team are excellent but simply being ignored. And his Rolodex has produced some rather curious signings, Suarez last season and Ceballos this season.

Now, I know a lot of folks think that a lot of those things are positives and there are some good points to be made. I get that Arsenal probably shouldn’t have allowed Ozil and Ramsey to run down their contracts and that we could have done better in the transfer markets and contract negotiations under Arsene Wenger. I really like the appointment of Edu. I get that we can’t just let players (like Koscielny) dictate where and when they are going to leave. But I just don’t like the way that the club are going about cleaning up the mess. And I don’t get what the club are doing letting Sanllehi run it off his personal Rolodex. This feels like we traded Arsene Wenger for Raul Sanllehi and frankly, I’m not seeing great results so far. In fact, we have spent a lot of money, made a lot of changes, and gone very far backwards.

So, here we are. Arsenal are a mess and a bit of a laughing stock. The players have spent 18 months (some of them just 6 months) running around without a clear direction. The club’s tactics are just as jumbled. Lots of players want out. Others are telling the supporters to f-off. Fans are infighting again – I actually saw a large Arsenal account (Layth) blame the toxic atmosphere at Arsenal matches on the foreign and tourist fans.

All of this means that the next permanent manager appointment at Arsenal is critical and it will signal Arsenal’s intentions going forward. I can only hope Sanllehi gets this right.

Qq

65 comments

  1. So Emery released a dignified statement thanking Arsenal, and Guendouzi made a classy post on twitter thanking the manager. A lot’s been said since the match yesterday and news of his sacking this morning, but I enjoyed those 2 acts the most. By the end, I felt sorry for him, and his decency shone through, but honestly, who was surprised that he got fired after that mess at home yesterday? He had to go, and go now. Getting fired sucks. I felt the sting of it once and cried in front of the boss. Yes, I’d lost my brother the day before and was raw, but I dont know that the reaction would have been different otherwise. So good luck, Unai Emery. In the end, things had thoroughly unraveled for you.

    This from Ornstein is interesting. It suggests that the decision had been made before the Frankfurt game.
    https://twitter.com/David_Ornstein/status/1200388468473552897/photo/1

    And this from James Olley is utterly dispiriting. The changing room of a team of professional athletes is for tough people.

    https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/arsenal-players-unai-emery-sacked-a4300281.html?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1575029208

    Freddie? He has two-thirds of a season to show that the job should be his permanently. One thing he will have from Day One is the crowd. I can’t wait to hear his song (one of the best ever)* ringing round the Emirates, as it will for the next home game. We need some feelgood back.

    *Sung to the tune of “You’re just to good to be true”

    1. I’m sorry you lost your job the day after you lost your brother. That’s a terrible, terrible thing. I have no words.

  2. The new regime’s coziness with agents is making me ill. Sanllehi’s apparently buds with Jorge Mendes (hence the Mourinho and Nuno links) and Edu is friendly with Kia Joorabchian whose tentacles are throughout Brazilian football which is rife with third party ownerships. And the fact that we, as a club, would seriously entertain the idea of Jose Mourinho as manager given all the things he said about our greatest legend, Arsene Wenger, is despicable.

    I’m not hopeful about the next appointment. I fully expect it to be Nuno at the end of the year or Paulo Fonseca or some other Mendes client. I laughed at the link to Marcelino – Mendes is tight with Lim at Valencia and they both ran Marcelino off when he bitched about selling Rodrigo (a Mendes client) to Atletico.

    Will we do what’s right an appoint an Arsenal purist, Vieira or Arteta to join up with Freddie? I doubt it.

    And please, no Allegri. He’d be another slow moving train wreck.

    1. I couldn’t agree with you more on Sanllehi’s ‘rolodex’ style. Arsenal feel like just another part of the football machine now, and it’s depressing to see. Furthermore, it’s hard to imagine it ever bringing success, since other clubs can do the same with bigger pockets. Where is arsenal’s class hiding?

  3. I must confess I thought Luiz was playing fantastic in the holding midfield roll and was bar far the best player on the pitch last night before he got injured.
    we lost our shape and momentum when Guendouzi came on for him.
    If he wasn’t injured last night today may not have happened (although it probably would have delayed the inevitable)

  4. Powerpoint Man está terminado (Rolodex? No wonder Raul was so impressed.).

    Roll out the bones and raise up your pitcher–
    Raise up your glass to Good King Fred The Red.

    Now bring us someone who can wield a tablet. If it’s Freddie or his liaison. Much to be tapped from the club’s StatDNA data modeling, now 7+ years in the making. We had been graced with a window of advantage being among the first to make the foray into engineering our own model. Now being better than never.

    Ljungberg was necessary no matter what. As a club it’s priority-one to re-cultivate the club’s identity– and Ready-Freddie was the first, best way to get it started. Honestly feel we can bolt things down on defense by planting Torriera in front of it. The real need is coordinating what we have in midfield to accentuate Mesut’s best abilities. Then release the attack/hounds.

    If Freddie can sort those things? Then we can start looking at the New Newman whose style fits what the players offer. Reconstitute what’s possible– from the best of what Arsene Wenger built for AFC. Then find who fits best into the red and white track suit. 🥇

    (Again and still– now placing an even larger bet on it being Mikel.)

    1. You make a good point about Freddie bringing back some of our identity, if only because he was part of our most glorious teams when Wenger was at his best. I think he’ll be a fine caretaker and I’m with you on Arteta. He seems to be very highly regarded by Pep and he’s extremely intelligent. Definitely worth a punt.

    2. You know what I find most annoying about the Sven Mislintat ousting? It’s that he was supposedly, and self avowedly, the guy who could stitch the advancements in data along with more traditional forms of scouting. On its own, StatsDNA hasn’t proven they’ve cracked it. So much so that Wenger went and invested in his own stats company.

      But we’re a few more years into it, so maybe it will start to pay some dividends. That is, if we decide to make use of it. Raul likes his Rolodex.

      Also, I recall you saying StatsDNA was involved in the youth teams quite heavily. Is that correct? Somehow, we’ve sacked Steve Morrow too. Does that mean we’re ready to replace him with stats? Though it’s more likely that Mendes and Joorabchian get to fill our youth ranks with their players.

      Raul Out please.

      1. Shard–
        Not so much involved with (to my knowledge)– than perhaps in the identifying of potential first-team characteristics in youth players– when even younger and more accurately.

        StatDNA’s video-driven scoring analyses were much more detailed than other commercially available data sets empowering football decision-making earlier this decade. My understanding is the scoring of matches by StatDNA could take up to 12 hours per– contrasting with 2-3 hours for providers like Opta. The level of detail was granular to the point of recording minutae; such as seconds (or fractions of) to perform a set or sets of actions by individual players.

        Arsenal, had been creating historical models of successful professional players by scoring archived video as far back as 1999– in order to have comparative models for potential youth-level candidates.

        This is the extent of what I’ve read over the course of the past 9 years– since the club first became interested in StatDNA (a now Chicago-based LLC under the Arsenal Overseas Holdings (AOH) umbrella. This entity originated in Seattle WA USA in the late-00s– set up by Sarah Rudd, of statistical-analyses renown).

        If I had to stab at it? This current crop of academy first-teamers and potentials– may have been graded-out against whatever model was in play at the genesis of Arsenal’s efforts. This does seem to be a very good crop of players coming up– yes?

        1. Thanks for the info. Yes, it seems like a talented group. How much of that is down to statistical models and how much of it scouting is difficult to know. Guess we’ll have to see.

          1. True.
            And in the past 2 years– there’s been little reporting on Arsenal’s usages of their assets, since Arsenal appointed Candy Crush guru Mikhail Zhilkin as a data scientist focusing on player fitness in 2018.

            Here’s a story I’d gathered along the way from the NYTimes in 2017:
            https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/03/sports/soccer/arsenal-arsene-wenger-analytics.html

            Bit of a puff-piece. Then again, glimpses inside the club’s application of proprietary data– went dark these last couple of years. My impression? That AW was comfortable with aspects of the club being guided by data– but kept at distance in his own decisions. But post-AW and with Gazidis parachuting out? If Emery was using any of what was available– like most things Unai– it wasn’t being implemented for advantage. Not expecting to hear much– unless results make it too obvious to keep unnoticed (always the optimist).

            Am impressed with uncut gem finds like Holding, Mavropanos (still), and Martinelli. The latter being a very rare find IMO.

            Suppose if the club keep the level of their academy grads at such quality as this– I’d have to give the data a nod. 🎯

  5. Freddie has until the end of February. He can only manage/coach at this level for three months on the UEFA-A badge he has right now.

    1. Disregard my above comment as I now understand that Freddie has the Uefa Pro licence which allows him to coach full time.

  6. Latest word is Ljungberg does have his UEFA Pro license.

    Several other people (Arseblog among them) are casting a an inquisitive eye on Sanelhi and just what has he really brought to the Arsenal besides his contacts. This next permanent coaching appointment should either make him or break him, not to mention setting further back. If the coach is another Mendes client, then we could be in for some deep shite.

  7. Gazetta and Fabrizio Romano say that Allegri is not in the running for Arsenal which is a shame.
    If Sanllehi screws up this next coaching appointment with another Mendes client like a Fonseca ( 9-6-3 with Roma ) or Marcelino Toral (life time coaching win percentage of 46%) then his ass will need to go along with that coach.

  8. Can someone tell me why people don’t like Allegri?

    Also, the argument against Poch (hasn’t won stuff) is crap. If Poch coached Juve, do you really think he’d not have some medals? Not saying he’s > allegri, but it’s a very different situation.

  9. I don’t think any of the famous managers who may be available (Allegri, Ancelotti, Benitez, etc.) will make a huge difference to this season. We need to settle the club, get our confidence back and take those necessary baby steps back to a successful footing. An Arsenal Man (Paddy, Mikel) may help with that, who knows.

    This – a club struggling to get back to its best – is more or less par-for-the-course after a generational manager, especially when that manager himself lost his mojo in latter years.

    The ride is rough right now but we get a new driver and a chance to finish the race with a chance of improving and I’m very happy about that. I wish Emery no ill will but he was way out of depth.

    1. And, worst of all, the football was well and truly cringeworthy to watch. Awful, awful stuff. If whoever comes in can – win or lose – make Arsenal watchable again will be enough for me until next season.

  10. Emery takes a bullet for this group of players but I have always thought that maybe we have to cull some of these players including Luiz, Mustafi, Özil because he moving now like he in treacle and the flicks are not cutting it any more, Bellerin if he can’t get back to his physical best, Kolasinac, AMN if he can’t get his attitude together, Leno because his distribution is shite and Papastathopoulos who spends half the game waving his arms around.

  11. Leno
    Bellerin
    AMN
    Papastathopolous
    Kolasinac
    Mustafi
    Luiz
    Özil
    Xhaka
    This is not my line up for Norwich but my line up of players that need to leave the club, do not past go and do not collect $200.
    Players who are being rated as a 5 or 6 because they didn’t do anything glaringly wrong are just not good enough for where we want to be. I want players who are consistently 7 or above on a weekly basis playing for this club and the next coach.

  12. Our next coach should not be some flavor of the month like a
    Santo
    Nagelsmann
    Tedesco
    Howe
    Jardem
    Sampaoli
    Wilder
    Lopetegui
    Marcelino
    Fonseca
    Kovac

  13. what’s next for arsenal? the same thing that was due when wenger was still the manager; a cdm.

    you can’t win anything without a good cdm. xhaka is not the answer and never has been. i disagree with you and agree with knobby that david luiz did a fine job last night. it was only when he went off that arsenal began to lose the plot. he may not be the best cdm but, looking at the arsenal roster, he’s the best option.

    there’s something to be said about experienced brazilians in the cdm role. for the last two seasons, man city had fernandinho and he’s been brilliant in helping city break all kinds fo records. fabinho has been equally brilliant for liverpool. even the invincibles had gilberto silva. it only makes sense that david luiz should be given that role until someone comes in who’s better. there are two reasons why.

    first, the position requires an experienced player. young guys seldom do well. it’s a sort of retro-forward move; getting older but playing a more significant role by dropping deeper into the formation. we’ve seen arteta and cazorla successfully do it. for david luiz it would be a forward move but a move that requires his experience and leadership. understand that it’s not about talent as makalele was never more talented than xhaka but was worlds better.

    second, moving david luiz to cdm get’s him off of the arsenal back line. when david luiz is back there, a huge hole develops between defense and midfield. it’s because luiz drops off whenever opponents have the ball for no apparent reason. it makes his job easier but it makes the team’s defensive job far more difficult.

    so, what’s next? a cdm. david luiz is the best answer and chambers might be second best. what i know is that both are better at cdm than xhaka and torreira.

    1. As ever you can’t keep your cake and eat it. Moving Luiz to a new position disrupts continuity in a key area for the potential reward of improved individual performance in one position out of 11. Josh you are a coach, and I know you know what really matters when the talent levels are about even is which team plays harder and which team is more cohesive. Luiz is a warrior, a good technician and a strong tackler. He can play that position. Is it really worth sacrificing the chemistry we’ve spent all season building in the back 4? You might say yes because they’re awful, but what’s the alternative? Building chemistry with a brand new back 4 at this point in the season is a recipe for calamity. Emery’s downfall in many ways was that he over thought things. He couldn’t believe in his convictions and ultimately that meant nobody believed in him either. Let’s not make that mistake again.

      1. arsenal don’t have continuity or chemistry to speak of that allows them to move forward. likewise, i’m not talking about a bunch of changes, only one and for the 2 reasons i already gave.

        with a poor cdm, there simply won’t be viable continuity. this is the most important position on the field and something arsenal must fix. if they fail to fix this, not much else matters.

  14. Clearly the club is in a bad moment. It’s hard to find an apt comparator for the amount of upheaval Arsenal has undergone in the past year or two. Most of the time, there is continuity on some level after a big change; either the leadership structure, the coaching or even the core group of players, but at Arsenal all of that has undergone complete overhaul. And isn’t this what people wanted after the final season of Wenger? Burn it all down? Well thats exactly what we got. We ran Wenger and Gazidis out of town, got a whole bunch of new players, and won the transfer window trophy.

    Yet I’m sensing that folks are even more lost than we were back then. Now by the sounds of things we don’t even know who we are supposed to be or what this club stands for. To compound that, I’m also sensing this compulsion to really excruciatingly wallow in how bad things are. It’s not enough that we have these problems, we also have to project inability to recruit a new manager, conspiracy theories involving the man who appointed Emery, because somehow they should’ve foreseen how this would turn out, and even draw attention to questionable reports about I’ll behaved players who presumably threw spitballs at each other in between imitating the coach’s accent. Everything is rotten in the state of Arsenal, is it not? Why make it worse than it is? Why fuel another fire to burn it all down again after just about a year or so in which we got almost exactly what we asked for? I can give you a great example of a sports team that is run on the whims of fans: Jimmy Haslem’s Cleveland Browns. Thats not who we want to be. We need strong leadership, continuity Especially in the face of adversity and strength in conviction. Victoria Concordia Crescit, y’all.

  15. So 29/11 is my birthday. Did the arsenal football executive committee decide to give me a birthday gift? I wrote last year on my FB that Emery was the wrong manager for arsenal and guys almost sent me under. That was during the 22unbeaten run. Then the same birthday I had an opportunity to to disagree with my boss. He wanted some guys fired and I said NO. What birthday. COYG.
    We must be brave again and arrogant enough to win or lose playing our way. The arsenal way.

  16. Emery should never have been hired, but even more, he should have been fired at the end of last season. Instead I believe it’s the Athletic telling us that Raul Sanllehi wanted to give him a new contract. Presumably there was resistance to that idea just as there seems to be resistance from Old Sir Chips now.

    I’m glad Emery’s gone. He wrought a lot of damage to the club in his time here. He also did not behave with Arsenal class. Throwing players (and Wenger) under the bus. But his letter yesterday was really classy. I wish him well in the future.

    I think my feelings on Raul are well known. I worry we’ll screw up what happens next because his focus is on being an agent man. How is he running our football department? It’s mad.

    But I’m unreasonably excited by Freddie. Because the first team football was awful, last season I turned to watching U23 highlights and matches, and it was entertaining stuff. Like Wengerball.

    Getting back to our identity and re-establishing club culture is the most important thing moving forward. Freddie will reportedly have Pires and Gilberto to help with that. That would make 4 Invincibles at the club plus Bould running the U23s and Per the youth. (Btw, why was Steve Morrow let go?)

    Tough games in the next month but performances should improve at least. I hope we give Freddie till the end of the season before making a decision to appoint a full time head coach.

    1. Myself? Am reading Unai’s missive through the lens of a one-time PR flak (another of my ‘hats’). Certain it garnered an OK digitally from Mr Emery. That writing though? Templated from a PR portfolio.

      Think: Her Majesty’s Obituary.
      This had been written and kept handy for several months I’d wager.

      Never been one for misty goodbyes.
      Cheers Unai.

      1. Oh it was absolutely drafted by a PR agency. Doesn’t matter though. He put his name on it, and as such they’re his words. I’m not changing my mind about him or his behaviour while he was here, but this was a nice way to end it.

      1. Hmmm.. I’m not sure what this means. By all accounts Morrow was considered to be very good at his job. Sounds like cost cutting to me (and the gap to filled in by agent recommendations)

        1. https://theathletic.com/1352188/2019/11/05/why-arsenal-sacked-morrow/
          Why Arsenal sacked Morrow: personality clashes, an inflated role and a failed academy in Greece – Amy Lawrence
          I’m not sure if you subscribe to The Athletic Shard but this article is paywalled. I’ll sum up the key points with quotes where needed if that is okay with Tim.
          – Per and Steve and a poor relationship. The disharmony was problematic as they were both key decision makers.
          – “One of Edu’s first observations when he returned to Arsenal last summer as technical director was surprise at the sheer number of staff across various departments” So, the streamlining that was been mentioned above by JW1 & the Metro article. Too many cooks in the kitchen so too speak.
          – When he first rejoined Arsenal from his time away in the US (Where he first came to the attention of Ivan Gazidis), his first position was to supervise international partnerships. The Greek academy operation was not a success and closed down quietly.
          – Gazidis promoted him to a position that had not existed previously in the Arsenal infrastructure, head of youth scouting. Traditionally, any youth player brought to the club came through the head of the academy (Liam Brady) or the chief scout (Steve Rowley). “Sometimes it can be hard enough for those two senior decision makers to agree on a prospect. The new role of a head of youth scouting injected extra confusion on the scene. Who makes the final call?”
          – Morrow had a strong ambition behind the scenes and was keen on several key positions that opened up over his 11 years at the club. He was considered for the 2014 opening of the head of academy position that went to Andries Jonker, “…there was a fairly instant personality clash with Morrow. The two men did not see eye-to-eye.” He was also interested in the TD position that went to Edu
          – The likes of Saka, Neilson, Willock, ESR came through the Hale End production line and we’re all spotted very young during the Liam Brady era who made his own decisions and did not have to negotiate a separate youth scouting department. This is the caliber of player the club wants to generate from the academy.
          – “Arsenal have ditched the model invented by Gazidis — with a specific head of scouting for the academy — and this decision allows them to streamline the process of making progress with their youngsters.” So Arsenal is going back to the traditional Liam Brady era Academy role where it is ultimately up to the Per to decide on how he wants to oversee the structure of youth recruitment and the standard to implement.
          – Per has noted in multiple interviews that he’s not just solely focused on results, but also the development of their young personalities and helping them cope with pressure but results in certain age groups has dipped in recent times which has not gone unnoticed by the club so they decided something had to change. Morrow was let go along with 5 members of the academy staff ( she does not specify who but other articles like the Daily Mail who I believe first broke this story have that broken down)

          https://www.football.london/arsenal-fc/news/steve-morrow-set-arsenal-exit-17199323
          Per was looking to streamline the academy. The quote from the bottom of the article.

          1. Excellent recap.
            Am a subscriber to The Athletic– yet missed that article.

            Will also mention– the online publication is easily the best $50 I’ll spend on sports over a year’s time. Not just Arsenal either. You can tick as many boxes, for as many teams in any sport– and get frequent emails when articles are written. For AFC alone it’s nearly every day during the season.

  17. Emery was the wrong man for the job for sure but the players’ conduct shows how little character there is in their ranks.
    Freddie’s got quite a job to shape them up into something loosely resembling a professional outfit.
    I’m now beginning to think Mourinho might’ve been an option.

  18. About time. He should have gone at the end of last season. Wish Freddie every success for his short stint. Make the football cohesive and entertaining as a priority. The rest should follow. I worry for him though as I‘m not convinced there aren‘t problems lurking amongst the squad. Time for them now to pull together and play to their abilities. I hope we can quickly unlearn the attitudinal, behavourial and technical contortions of the last year. Feel the joy of playing well again. COYG, looking forward to our upcoming games now, especially at the Emirates.

  19. Freddie has just done his first interview for sky sports.
    he came over as a really nice confident person. he doesn’t seem a shouter sergent major type just keeps it to a few words that hopefully players will listen to.
    they should also know what he has done for the club and what he acheived, this squad will never repeat it.
    I dearly hooe we don’t elevate him into the top job and just dump him out the club if things take time, it would be a shame long term to lose him and taint his legacy.
    the board, the players and us fans need to give him our best support even when thing are not going great.
    we now have the best looking manager in the premier league freddie *calvin klein” lljungberg.

  20. Thanks for the post Tim

    I must admit that I was a fan of the Emery appointment and I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. I thought we needed to move in the opposite direction of the Wengerian lassiez faire sort of managerial style and I hoped Emery’s penchant for preparation and organization would be exactly what we needed especially on the defensive end. I really thought/hoped our defense would instantly improve and improving results would follow. Unfortunately I was clearly wrong especially about the defense improving. Emery inherited a squad that was aging in a lot of critical positions and heading in the wrong direction and we spent a lot of money but things clearly have not improved and its well past time for the change

  21. At the end of the day KSE doesn’t really care and just going to allow the club to do whatever and unless it threatens the valuation and their investment it doesn’t much matter.

  22. Hopefully the managerial change brings us a run of results similar to what happened when Man U sacked mourinho and brought in OGS last year.

  23. I didn’t think Luiz had a bad game in midfield. I’m sure there are a whole lot of stats that say otherwise, but from just watching the game, we seemed to play worse when he went off injured. He reads the game well, which makes up for the fact that he is slow. On that evidence, I much prefer him to Xhaka. I also think it enables us to play two centre halves who can defend, with him playing in front rather than behind. I think it was an experiment worth considering and developing. Put him alongside Torreira and play all the ball players higher up the pitch.

    1. xhaka and torreira are the same to me; two players ill-suited for the premier league. £35 million and £26 million respectively wasted. arsenal should count their losses and sell them both in the summer…and bid for £40 million for dacoure right now.

      considering the player options arsenal have available, david luiz is the best choice at cdm. i would even give second to chambers ahead of both xhaka and torreira. we’ll see what arsenal does.

  24. If Im recruiting for Arsenal Head Coach in the spring of 2018, Unai Emery is a rational choice. Not a fire-in-my-loins choice, but a rational choice. His CV, his clubs, his trophies (Europa), his experience, and of course, his dossier. He revealed himself over time to be a bad fit at Arsenal, thus proving that no recruitment process is error-free.

    I see Shard loudly declaring, now, that he should never have been hired, something I didn’t hear him boldly declare in May of last year. Revealing yourself to be a bad fit and making a sound appointment on paper are two different things. Emery’s was a rational pick, but he turned out to be bad fit for the role. It may sound odd to frame it that way, but both of those things can be true.

    He could have been fired after the late season and Europa final collapse last season (it was a sackable offence), or we could have taken the view at the beginning of this season (as Bunburyist did before the wheels clearly came off) that he was inheriting a tough hand and needed time. Both those things can be true. I say this as someone who deplored his “man management” of 3 of our senior players.

    The way forward is going to involve a hard choice for Arsenal. The place looks broken from top to bottom, factionalism is rife, the dressing room is poisonous by several accounts. Freddie, first of all is going to have to bring the joy and love back. Let the football do the talking, and leave aside crap like whose Instagram posts Aubameyang likes.

    The Arsenal that Islington sees is a club that is classy… does everything right, from community outreach, to schools outreach, to spot on observations of religious holidays, to how it presents its face to the world. It is the football that is broken, not the club; but ultimately the club is about the football.

    You want Arteta? Sure. But are you prepared for similar results in the short haul? Do you have the patience that a rookie manager would demand that you have? Or has the club fallen too far too fast, and is shock therapy rather than a feelgood project what is required now? I can see why the looked at Mourinho. Corporate turnarounds don’t care about your feelings.

    1. The way forward? Please.
      Is going to come down to who will have us now.

      Not many top-shelf prospects (few that there are) will be chomping the bit to sign to manage a club run by the easily-fooled Powerpointists who hired Emery– then let him run-on for 2 months past his sell-by date. If it were me? Not sure I’m going to have the trust to put my reputation forward and on-the-line following Unai Ennui at Arsenal.

      Who is it you have in mind?

  25. I agree with Claude. Its easy to criticize in retrospect but prospectively I don’t think Emery was a bad choice for manager. The fact that it did not work proves that he was the wrong choice but no prospective manager will be perfect in every respect and emery had some positive things in his resume.

    His major undoing was our team defense and I never will understand why his Arsenal teams were so poor defensively. A huge part of the problem in his first season was he and almost everyone else over rated his experienced core players such as Ozil, Kos, Xhaka, Mustafi, Nacho, Iwobe, Cech, Elneny etc etc. Again in retrospect he probably should have been sacked at the end of his first season but realistically you had to give him one more chance. However, the team has gone backwards in his second season.

  26. The last year of the Wenger era was the worst in more then 2 decades. We finished on 63 points and we never came close to competing for 4 place and we lost in the semifinals of the EL. We were a club with an aging poorly constructed squad that was clearly heading in the wrong direction. In Emery’s first year we improved from 63 to 70 points and we at least had a real chance to finish 4th and we made it to the EL finals. A real argument could be made that we did improve last season and I certainly understand why the club did not want to sack him without giving him a second season.

  27. I disagree.
    I was very , very late in joining the Emery out camp and I will give the next manager every chance to prove himself, but the last thing the late Wenger era Arsenal needed was another coach with a poor away record the likes of Emery’s in LaLiga.
    His PSG record was largely irrelevant.

    That alone should’ve been a major red flag.

  28. I agree the record with PSG can be disregarded. However he won 3 Europa league titles at Sevilla with an underfunded squad where they sold his better players and the top 3 spots in the league were set before the start of every season. His teams also did well at Valencia.

  29. perhaps it was a communication problem then.
    I was hoping he would pick it up a bit quicker but he struggled Arsenal should have fixed this,

  30. Arsenal’s priority as a club shouldn’t be to do well in the EL but the PL.
    Counting on CL entry via EL is a crapshoot.

  31. What next for Arsenal? In the immediate term two tracks. On the playing side I envisage a win tomorrow with a following upturn in performances. Confidence will slowly return, fans will feel better and the nonsense in the tabloids about player factions will disappear.

    From the management side it’s all a little less assuring. The leadership team are rightly called out for their weakness in allowing the Emery situation to continue ‘til late November. There are also some serious question marks as to their experience, competence and basic understanding of football as to whether they appoint a suitable successor.

    Speaking of which, who is out there that will take over this season? (the answer is very, very few candidates). If it’s a safe pair of hands who’ll achieve consistency but not lay the foundations for a title challenge in three years time then Benitez is your man. If it’s a bigger gamble you’re after in the hope to uncover the ‘next great thing’ then you’d set your sights on Arteta. But I have serious reservations that he’s experienced enough to handle the current Arsenal management structure. And I’m never convinced by people who shelter as number two for such a long time (where’s the hunger?).

    Come the Summer of 2020 things may look a little different but it’s difficult to see a choice of outstanding candidates that are ready, willing and able.

  32. Why should UE’s record with PSG be ignored?

    He was at a team where money was no problem, he had a team full of stars and yet made a mess of it.

    When he was appointed I kept on asking why he left PSG and no one could answer.

    We also know now that the famous “dossiers” meant nothing if they even existed.

    I am sorry, I do not feel sorry for him or wish him well.

    He has almost single-handed destroyed the team I have supported for nearly 60 years.

    I fear that removing him may not be the solution whilst we have questionable people in charge of decision making.

    I am excited at what I hope to see from Freddie, starting tomorrow.

    However, if Guendouzi is in the starting line up then I will think that it will be more of the same.

    This player should be in the under 23s for the time being until he learns that running around doing nothing in particular, is not what one expects from someone playng for a top club.

  33. Look next to the definition of Footballing Peter Principle– and there is a headshot of Unai Emery. A manager that was a serial 6th-place finisher in La Liga. Managed to ride his teams through 3 consecutive second-tier competitions to a trophy– easier to capture than an FA Cup. Consider the crap teams from the PL recently that took that hardware home. PSG knew by the time he left. And yet, after failure on several fronts in Paris– he was allowed to continue his ‘Petering’ in North London.

    Tim has spelled out everything about Emery that should have been known to the 6 execs (Josh, Ivan, Raul, Vinai, Huss, Sven) who ‘agreed’ on Emery as a last-minute save-the-day selection to avoid an earlier choice– being Mikel Arteta.

    Those who wish to brush off the hiring of Emery as anything than the eventual footballing Hindenburg it is? Are still, today, making the same mistakes– those 6 made 18-months ago.

    FFS. Emery has been playing Jenga with everything this club had as stable and reliable for over a year now.

    AFC would have been far more stable, retaining more of the club’s culture– likely fans and supporters more patient with Arteta; a first-time manager with Arsenal DNA .

    The choice of Unai Emery wasn’t a conservative or principled choice.
    It was one made out of fear. Fear of making a huge mistake.
    By Josh, Ivan, Raul, Vinai, Huss and Sven.
    Now those 5 are responsible for cleaning up a huge, avoidable mistake– with even less patience from the paying public– following the worst stretch on-pitch in 27 years.

    And you can post with straight-faced intent that Mikel Arteta was the worse choice?
    Nobody can whitewash this sh^tstorm now.
    Do everybody a favor and quit trying.

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