Unai Emery dealt with his first major humiliation at Arsenal in a game that was of no surprise to anyone paying attention to what’s been going on over the past few months. We sent out a group with sticks and stones to respond to players with nuclear weapons. There was never a chance. It was an obliteration. The spanking was so hard, there wasn’t even a bloodbath, because we’d been vaporised.
Fans had to have seen that coming, we’ve been getting away with a lot of average over the past 5 months. There was always going to be a correction. The defence has been incredibly porous, but we’ve rode our luck. Our strikers have been outrageously efficient in every game. Our style of play has yet to be defined. This result was always on the cards, but we hoped the slap back to reality wouldn’t be so brutal.
There are two conflicting issues we’re running up against here that could cause challenges as we look to progress from 14 years of squad and backroom neglect.
The coach has to get a free pass is the first.
It’s very difficult to apportion too much blame on the manager. We don’t live in a world where there’s one man who makes all the decisions. There’s now three. No man, woman or child can look at the squad Emery has and say that he’s been given anywhere near the right tools to do a good job at Arsenal. We are woefully short across the board. Our keeper looks fragile, our defence is old, our star midfielder is slow and ponderous, and we have no wide players of note. That is not the work of Emery alone. That’s the remnants of Arsene Wenger and some teething problems with Sven Mislintat.
As a friend pointed out to me. Klopp finished 8th in his first season with Liverpool, the Poch dropped fewer points than Tim Sherwood in his debut with Spurs. You don’t build an elite side in a season unless the owners invest properly, or you get very, very lucky.
The concern I have is what comes after we invest?
As much as I want to believe in the current man in charge, I’m struggling to see what the offering is at the moment. This feels like a transition moment. Like the club is upgrading the gym, injecting some energy, and fixing the basics. We’re 6 months into this project and I can’t see what the plan is. What’s the style? How are we solving the defensive issues? Things have been so rough that we’ve only led once at halftime in half a season. That says the coach doesn’t know how to pick a good starting 11 and he doesn’t know how to fix the defence.
This is the conundrum the club is in. We have made our bed and the only way to give Emery a fair crack is to supply him with a shit tonne of money we know almost certainly isn’t coming.
So we are in a stasis situation. We’re exacerbating our problems by funnelling resource into someone who is unlikely to take us to the next level, which is probably going to put us further back. I don’t think Arsenal can absorb the cost of a transition coach like United have been able to. There’s too little interest from the owner to be able to afford that.
That’s the brutality of elite sport. Bad decision after bad decision puts you further and further out. I’m sure we’ll be in a better place by the end of the season. Things won’t be that bad. However, I don’t think the coach we have in at the minute is better than any of the coaches above us. If you want to find the next level, you have to find someone with new and original ideas. Someone who can extract more out of less. I just don’t think we have that, and unfortunately, it’s going to take us 2 years to come to this exact conclusion, because no exec team is going to own up to a mistake this early on.
So what do we have to look forward to?
Well, the club can certainly make some aggressive moves in January. We need to clear out the players that can’t help us moving forward. Say what you will about Emery, the biggest challenge he’s had to deal with is having his two best players in conflict with his vision. Aaron Ramsey has been deemed not good enough which is the correct decision. He needs to be shipped off. Mesut Ozil is a broken player who hasn’t given a fuck for 3 years, let’s do whatever we can to clear him from the wage bill.
Then we need to sign in better. We need the cream of the 22-year-old’s so we can elevate our play.
We also need to move on the players that are clearly too old or too weak for where we need to go. Mo Elneny shouldn’t be with us if he has no use outside league cup games. Lichtsteiner has been a miserable experiment. You can’t adapt to the Premier League at his age. Koscielny is finished. Love him, but it’s over. Granit Xhaka is never going to hit the level, it doesn’t matter how many passes he sprays around, he’s too slow and prone to bouts of dimness.
The squad needs to be aggressively shaken up, because everyone around us it getting better, and that’s before United find another 100m to spend with a proper manager.
The biggest concern for Emery right now though is to inject some belief into the squad. Those players will switch off from him very quickly if he doesn’t get them firing very quickly. He’s made some bold decisions, but they’re not paying off. He needs to get everyone back on side and he needs to rally those troops fast. We cannot afford to have a Wenger like flop in January and February, there’s too much riding on this season for it to be over now.
Just before I go, the absolute atrocity of the exAKB ghouls who came bounding online yesterday like they’d just won the lottery was truly shameful. If you can’t piece together the direct implication of Wenger in our current mess, you truly have no place commenting on football. Taking joy in a loss because you think your average opinions of Wenger having a rough ride over the past 14 years is the height of shit fandom. And yes, there was a lot of that yesterday. Utterly pathetic.
We are paying the direct consequence of not firing Arsene Wenger 8 years ago when it was clear we were on the slide. We let everything fail, from top to bottom. We let good people rot, we passed on innovation, we didn’t bring in great players and we failed to maintain a grip on an elite mentality. That’ll take any coach longer than 6 months to fix.
Right, that’s me done, see you babes in the comments.
DM
2
Bankz is here for the Tr4phy again
Tr4phy
Boom
Yesterday was a nightmare.
Arsenal and Emery need to fix up ASAP.
Suddenly United are only few points behind.
Not this time Bankz
Yeh, yesterday was really poor, but a good wake up call. We have a long way to go. Can’t see us getting top 4 this season, may be best to focus on Europa? Emery needs a good few transfer windows to address the very obvious issues in the squad.
As for the fans calling for his head, or saying we were better off with Wenger… honestly, there are no words for these idiots.
We all knew we’d lose but to lose in that manner? Lesser sides will go there and not be so defensively brittle.
It’s very worrying that our team is without an identity.
Amen, Pedro.
Exactly right Pedro. We failed to modernise for years deciding instead to hang onto an old imbecile because it was uncomfortable for many fans to try to remove him/imagine life without him. Our infrastructure was totally lacking, no DoF, no updated scouting network, limited analytics and one man in total power. Our coaching staff was also totally lacking, most of our coaches had been at the club since the late 90s or early 00s. Our acquisitions were pretty bad, Wenger blew a lot of transfer money and a lot of wages on dross. A lot of people said when this… Read more »
I posted this on the previous post. I post it here again. Let me say it here and now as I have always said before, Emery is a small club manager. He will never come good for Arsenal. He is a Europa teams manager like Seville, Benfica, Basel et al. He spends so much of his time reviewing videos than actually improving players. We defended like a pub team yesterday. When it was easier and safer to just tap the ball out for a corner, Lichtsteiner…one of his signing who was suppose to be the experienced guy guiding our defence… Read more »
Yes we were v.poor yesterday.but the scousers got us at a v.vulnerable time.with the injuries & limited options defensively this was always on the cards.still though we manage to shoot ourselves in the foot.& that has happened repeatedly..having a c__ t of a ref in ” Oliver”(7 penalties against in last 10 matches!) Welcome son of Dean.did not help.once again. Fortune for the dippers but NOT an excuse for abysmal defeat.It’s more apparent than ever the shithole wenger had left us in & like it or not it’ll take as had been pointed out by pedro 3/4 windows to rectify
Emery out…simple as that. No point doing it now, but the club should 100% be lining up a better manager for the summer. Emery focused entirely on the defence, brought in 5 players, spent £70m and made it worse. It would be suicide to give him more money when he did nothing with the first £70m. I think, in terms of league position, Emery is given a bit of a pass for this season. However we’ve seen absolutely nothing to suggest anything is being built here. UTD will be 3 behind us shortly. This is UTD that the whole football… Read more »
Also notice that pretty much anyone that vehemently backs Emery is suffering from significant Wenger-induced PTSD
It’s like admitting Emery doesn’t have it is in some way backing Wenger.
It is possible that Wenger was useless…but Emery is not good enough.
Wenger is gone, he shouldn’t come into the conversation any more.
Beginning to feel Emery gives more weightage to pace, athleticism and energy of a player than raw skills. Any sane observer could foresee PEA struggling against Liverpool as a lone striker yet Emery chose him over Lacazzete. That Iwobi gets game time in all our matches can be explained or perhaps to some extent justified simply because he can press and run. Perhaps we will see Ozil and Mikhi shifted out from our squad sooner than later. We had Arsene who overemphasized skills and ignored athleticism and now we have Emery who has scant regard for guile and skills. It… Read more »
Imagine rating Frank lampard higher than emery LOL
‘Emery who has scant regard for guile and skills’ How do you know that? Based on a few months of a transfer window trying to fix a broken squad with £70 Million? Then ousting a player who is the laziest footballer in existence? Pochettino also values athleticism, so does Klopp, in fact Poch’s early teams were regarded by many pro-Wenger fans on here like Wallace etc as a team of big brutes lacking footballing skill. I seriously think these definitive statements about Emery being good enough/not good enough prizing this type of player of that are really stupid. He’s basically… Read more »
The fact that he has chased Banega for all this time who is a good technical player, the fact he started out trying to field both Ozil and Mkhitaryan and the fact he seems to like Xhaka suggests to the contrary of that opinion.
Impossible to say without him stamping his signature more.
Some of the comments on this page are so embarrassingly pathetic it is making me LOL. Imagine saying emery out already and being serious about it. Jesus Christ get a grip,, it is quite sad that is the mind frame of these new age fans. I mean last night we had to start iwobi and ANM as our supporting attackers. Can you comprehend how bad that is that emery has to start those players against Liverpool away? Should we have been beaten like that? No. Is it emery faults? Yea to a certain extent as he should have set up… Read more »
Pedro I have just posted on previous thread a summary of our present predicament. When you analyse our squad it is fairly clear that there between 10-12 players inclusive two out on loan who need to be culled. The cost of such a decision will result in very little incoming transfer revenue. Ramsey and Welbeck will leave on Bosmans and Ozil is frankly unsaleable. Players like Cech, Lichsteiner, Koscielny and Monreal are also unlikely to generate transfer fees on account of age and inflated wages. So the bottom line is that Arsenal are now a middle rank team [6-10 finish]… Read more »
Terraloon “The years of underinvestment are now being laid bare” Does this “underinvestment” always equate to being shit defensively. For years and years. There are midtable clubs that have spent a pittance over the years compared to Arsenal that have better defensive records let alone the better clubs at the top of the table that have far superior defensive records. Arsenal always show up well or fairly well in goals scored. It’s the conceding of goals that has hurt the team and teams in the past. We hear all this talk of clever managers or managers with a vision. It… Read more »
Yes holding onto Wenger for too long will turn out to be a nasty hangover for the club.
It’s all ok though because Emery said the words “work” and “improve” about 100 times in his presser.
I remember him saying that in June.
Funny that there’s been no improvement
Lets be really clear about something here, because the blame game is getting boring to witness. You can believe Wenger left us anywhere from the gutter to the palace, but the only relevant topic is what Emery has done since inheriting it. What effect has he had? What changes have been made? What does the future hold based off these past 6 months? My issue is the answers to the above. I don’t see the effect, I can’t see the change, and I’ve no clue what direction we’re headed under him because I don’t know what his philosophy is for… Read more »
Lets get over Wenger and move on.
We have a new manager, coaching team [apart from Bould] and Mislintat [head of scouting] and Sanllehi [football director].
So our personnel has got basically three transfer windows including last summer to prove that they are up to plate.
That assumes that Kroenke as 100% owner of club provides adequate financial investment to make required changes.
Gambon “Emery focused entirely on the defence, brought in 5 players, spent £70m and made it worse.” Come on 70m for 5 players is pittance. It is piggy bank money. And he needed to bring in 5 because the squad was not up to scratch. Sometimes you get gems for Europa League money fees. More often though you get Europa League level players for Europa League transfer fees. Leno is Europa League level. Sokratis is Europa League level. Guendouzi is green and one for the future. Lichtsteiner is sunday park kick about level. The only signing that has the potential… Read more »
Good post and analysis. Emery 100% feels like the supply teacher at the moment…he is not the man who will push us forward and I believe a three year deal was too much. Two would have been appropriate. If Arsenal are to be taken seriously as a club, we have to do one of two things. 1. Recruit Pep Guardiola. Give him £30m a season and a budget be done with it. 2. Go batshit mental and recruit a young buck. Forget Wenger. Yes, he created a culture of failure but he’s gone now. How long does emery get riding… Read more »
Arsenal hired a middle of the road manager with no X factor. That was obvious from the start. Narrative wise, the club aren’t going to admit that so we are stuck in a rut.
We needed to hire someone who could deal with our circumstances or bring something fresh to the table. I think we have fucked ourselves hard here
I would say that many fans (including me) were surprised that from the very first game of the season until now , the defence has not been a priority. By failing to address our defensive issues Emery has left himself open to criticism. I have asked the question from day one, why are our full backs so advanced in a flat back 4 ….a team will never be solid defensively with both full backs so advanced . We appeared to rectify this by playing wing backs ( Bellerin and Kolasinac) and 3 central defenders and we were starting to concede… Read more »
Nice to read somebody like Al, a bit of objectivity and sense… feels good, especially compared to gambon, pierre, GoH and many others.
When you analyse our squad and are OPTIMISTIC there are currently at best
six players who are good enough to play in our starting eleven. That includes
Aubameyang and Lacazette who Emery appears unwilling to play together as
a collective.
So on that evidence alone we need to invest in a minimum of five to six new players. If the club applies that rule in our investment we can probably get
away with retaining several players as squad/bench players without replacing
them.
Really hard reading the comments on this site after a poor result. Frank Lampard?
Jesus Christ.
We look to have so much more when we play Lacazette and Aubameyang together or just Lacazette Why the insistence on Aubameyang? Yes he offers goals but the game has passed theat by. He also misses far too many good chances in right games or otherwise and offers very little else apart from a final touch. Why haven’t our defenders been drilled sufficiently enough to drastically reduce the amount of serious errors leading to goals? What is our marking strategy? Why were Lichtsteiner and Sokratis able to defend well at their previous clubs but not for emery? Why has Leno’s… Read more »
Need a midfield that can press as a unit as well as getting in better defenders in the backline.
Midfield pressing can help defensively.
Atm the midfield is incapable of this to any sort of consistent level.
Stroller
Who are the other 4?
“We needed to hire someone who could deal with our circumstances or bring something fresh to the table. I think we have fucked ourselves hard here“ Don’t think it’s that bad, just underwhelming given the potential we had to jolt back into life. I’ve said numerous times it’s dofficult to judge Emery’s effect right away because the new manager and new impetus at Arsenal was always going to bring a buzz no matter who took over. It’s the lack of clarity in what he brings that gets me. I still wish we’d have gone for Benitez as someone to redress… Read more »
Guns, you absolutely nailed it on your point about competing. We bitch about not being able to match the big clubs while Atleti and Spurs beast us with far less cash. I feel like the mentality at Arsenal is we can’t, so we won’t. There seems to be no guiding principle to what we’re doing. What is our transfer strategy? How do we out manoeuvre other clubs? How do we want to coach our players to extract more from them?
We should have a better vision for how we break into the next level.
” If it was as simple as the squad not being good enough then why sack Wenger in the first place? Just keep him on and let Sven bring new guys in. Right?”
This is a very good point.
For years we were told Wenger didn’t do tactics, couldn’t train defence, made life too easy etc.
Absolutely nothing has changed in terms of performance and suddenly it’s just the quality of the players that are a problem
Big A for Arsenal no.
It should be a big A for Amateur in everything the club does.
We are the most Naive club when we buy and when we sell.
Cesc
Banega is another Europa league level player.
Great comments by Cesc Appeal.
Seen a few people starting to express concern that UE is right man for this job, which is disappointing, then Pedro basically says the same. After 6 months!
Not sure what to make of it tbf.
Has there even been communication to Emery that things must change i.e better defence and defensive record? He made no comments at all that he would look to rectify this obvious fault in the team although it is obvious that this needs to be mended to see the club advance. In fact he implied the opposite with his rather win 4-3 than 1-0 comment at the start of the season. Perhaps he thought that was what the fans wanted to hear. Arsenal are still fudging it on the defensive side. The defensive signings in the summer proved that bar Torreira.… Read more »
Hard to forget Wenger, the article says the decline has been going on for at least ten years, and guess what, roughly the time Kroenke became majority shareholder, Wenger and Kroenke are linked in lingering complicity to this one. Yes, Kroenke finally did the right thing, he and Josh bought in some good people. As for Emery, think we now know many other elite managers wouldn’t touch this job, Emery has stepped up. Get the sense he is trying to do a lot and soon, or being told to, he runs a fine line with pissing off the players. This… Read more »
Peter Eddie Murphy did a skit about making ends meet when your poor…”when you’re rich, those ends are meeting like a motherfucker”. The wage bill alone should have us better than most clubs on the planet. We’re now maybe only the third best team in london. There is a genuine mentality issue at play down at the Emirates and as you said…it’s like arsenal have decided that “it’s hard so we’ll just continue to tow the line”. Sad. Really sad. Most people on here think I moan and whine (I do) but I’ve served my time following the arsenal for… Read more »
Wenger will never be gone as long as Steve Bould is still here, A Pathetic signing.
Emery is not the problem, The problem has been a decade of total neglect by the Owners, Board and Arsene Wenger, Can Emery fix that nobody really knows but at least the problem has been identified , The solution will take time, Maybe a few years,
First thing to do is to unload Bould and all the Brock on our books, The Squad for next season has to be almost completely overhauled , Kroneke has to own this mess.
“So we are in a stasis situation. We’re exacerbating our problems by funnelling resource into someone who is unlikely to take us to the next level,” Spot on Pedro, The more reason we have to cut our losses asap and bring in a long term better manager. No need wasting funds on his pet toys like Banega He’s got in a bunch of oldies already and there’s little to zero improvement Emery hasn’t a Scooby what’s like to set up a defensively sound team,its shocking Really missed the boat big time to go back eating right back at the table… Read more »
My overall assessment of Arsenal Football Club is quite simple but however fundamental and while I agree with Pedro’s post. it seems we still havent addressed the biggest issue – its not just a style of play. Arsenals current malaise is not attack or defence related but lacking a spine – that is 4 crucial players that are standout performers in their various roles -CONSISTENTLY turning out top level performances in each game. That was the main difference between Liverpool and Arsenal yesterday Liverpool: Allison GK Rarely conceeds, sets up counters that lead to goals Virgil Van Dyke CB Calm… Read more »
Pedro, if I were to sum up your piece in one word, it would be ‘despair’. Sad to say, I agree with you. Arsenal has been in a desperate state for many years. Like you, I do not believe that a momentous amount of money will be spent, certainly nowhere near enough to make us an elite club again. After all, this is the Kroenke era. Liverpool (under Klopp) and Tottenham (under Poch) – unlike Man U, Man City and Chelsea – have succeeded without the need to spend billions. Hopefully, Emery & Co can achieve the same. But we… Read more »
Just before I go, the absolute atrocity of the exAKB ghouls who came bounding online yesterday like they’d just won the lottery was truly shameful. If you can’t piece together the direct implication of Wenger in our current mess, you truly have no place commenting on football. Taking joy in a loss because you think your average opinions of Wenger having a rough ride over the past 14 years is the height of shit fandom. And yes, there was a lot of that yesterday. Utterly pathetic. Er Pedro That’s exactly what’s been going on for the last 8 years only… Read more »
You can tell the prowess of a good manager in how he brings out the best from seemingly average players he can’t improve our lot, so where’s the confidence he can do better by spending more on dross It’s alarming even after bringing in 5 players of his own players we’re still defending like amateurs An average manager will remain just that regardless of the amount of money he spends on new players He’s pissed off Laca,a player that largely contributed to his 22 game unbeaten run Continues to over work the team and now their dropping like flies,almost like… Read more »
Other than that’s I’d agree with everything said in the post though. Completely.
I will never forgive Wenger for his criminal vanity in the face of declining powers.
If he’d have had the grace to stand aside – we could and should have had either Guardiola and Klopp. They both wanted to come , this was when we still had the cache that has now sadly evaporated.
We are suddenly an upper mid-table outfit who might snatch the odd unimportant cup.
Thanks Arsene…
“We can only improve with the purchase of Kalidou Koulibaly, Willy Boly of Wolves, Ben Chilwell in defence, Nabil Fekir in midfield and Ousmane Dembele and Ryan Sessegnon of Fulham as our wingers.”
Reasonable and affordable targets identified – I’ll particularly like us to go all out for a defender in the class of Koulibaly – one who would essentailly be the base of the ‘spine’.
If we do go for a stop gap like Banega, we definitely need class in defence and not the reverse – class in midfield with a stop gap in dfence i.e. Chaill
Nice to see it doesn’t take long for the knives to come out. Someone even wants Lampard as manager, probably off the back of his side scoring two goals to win in the final minutes yesterday. Absolutely laughable. Emery is culpable in regard to the defending. But when players make such poor plays or just basically lame brained errors like they did yesterday there is little he can do about that. A 34 year old professional who is vastly experienced and was a mainstay in an Italian title winning machine like Lichtsteiner tucking in too narrow for Liverpool’s third goal… Read more »
Seems like most posters either take a Pro Wenger/Emery viewpoint or Anti Wenger/Emery viewpoint without analysing the problems within the team.
Forget about pointing fingers, the solutions are feasible with the support of all fans as long as we’re pateint and realistic enough to accept change will be drawn out and painful rather than instant and immediate.
Knee jerk calls for Emery to be replaced will result in a United type scenario which of which Arsenal Football Club will not be able to financially muscle its way out of
The silver lining of our drop of form and results at this specific time is its right before the TW opens If we’d started the season with this form then we’d got that huge winning and unbeaten streak there would be no pressure on the club to make signings. If you had a choice of where our bad form would kick off, I don’t think we could’ve asked for a more practical moment as it’s hard to look at the club right now and think we don’t need to spend some money (or at least go hard for a few… Read more »
Agree with everything you say Pedro.
We are all enjoying Wenger’s curse. Poor management from top to bottom – we can also see how he is now regarded. The only club that will take him is Milan with his best chum Ivan. And I’m not even sure of that. Perhaps we can encourage them to take Ozil too.
As for the AKB’s – they are not Arsenal fans, relishing this result as a vindication of Wenger. Pathetic!
This is a 2 season rebuild if we are lucky, it might even go beyond Emery.
Coffee cakes I agree with what you say but do you not think that every single goal yesterday was down to either A) new signings B) no defensive structure Yes it’s the same old problem we had under wenger and it was atrocious then but that doesn’t give emery a hall pass. Wasnt he brought in for his pragmatism? Then where is it? Yesterday wasn’t just teething issues it was just awful awful defending. Had we gone with a back 3 we may have stood a chance perhaps, I don’t know. But the players we had on yesterday were good… Read more »
You should be flat out ashamed of yourself, Pedro. You never wanted nor liked Emery. You groveled from the moment he was hired (this from a guy who wanted Arteta, the same guy who does shit all at ManCity and has no one calling him for a job) and despite your claims otherwise, you still cant stand him. I dont know whats worse, you leading a band of Anti-Wengers for years or you leading a band of Anti- Emery’s? What i do know is that there is but one common denominator in the two scenarios- you. If you dont have… Read more »
What bothers me the most is that we don’t learn from our mistakes…we go a goal up [maybe against the run of play, maybe fortuitously] but instead of tightening up, supporting the defense and switching to hit-on-the break we played as if nothing had happened
we have been very vulnerable after a goal and three minutes after we scored they scored and then three minutes later they scored again
why can’t we just solidify the situation and then build out again gradually?
I like to hope the club will be proactive regardless of our form, but over a decade of treating January as a bit of a joke and the club treating every bit of good form as an excuse to neglect investment fucking terrifies me
In the past the only way we’ve seen action from the club is when panicking as the kitchen was on fire. History tells me this poor form is the only way for the club to be motivated this January
I want to make a point that I raised last season when most opposing teams recognised the basic weakness in our defence. We have two wing backs on our books in Bellerin and Kolasinac who are not bad players in the role that they are asked to play. However, when they play in the same team they are a collective disaster, because neither is solid defensively and too often they are out of position at the same time leaving our defence on the flanks completely exposed. You can play one of these wing backs in the starting eleven, but they… Read more »
Un na…Defending is the bane of the clubs existence and certainly something that cant be fixed when you have effectively broken parts to begin with. What exactly could anyone do with the likes of Mustafi? What do you do with Sokratis? Koscielny? All of them slow of foot and numb of mind. Its a mess and certainly when you have an ownership that tosses peanuts at you to spend…again, what would anyone honestly expect? They have been horrible for years and its not going to change no matter who is in charge.
People getting upset about new signings making mistakes can’t see the woods from the trees Every single player in the squad will drop bad performances sometimes. That applies to every player in world football outside of what messi? Even Ronaldo has had periods of being booed by his own moronic Madrid fans for failing to score for a few games The average performance a player puts in is what you should be concerned with. Torreira has been excellent. Sokratis has been pretty good. Guen has been mixed but mostly impressive.licht has been poor. So this rush to jump on them… Read more »
Our issue is we not trying to just set up defensively as that would be pretty easy.
He is trying to create an ultra attacking side hay
It was obvious that the rebuild process would be tortuous and take some time . Yesterday’s result is one rise things that will haven along the way.
Why all these OTT outrage because we got a pasting from a better team?
There’s no manager who’s not had days like yesterday. You all need to stop all the drama.
GOH…the wages spent are disproportionately out of whack, primarily because someone in their infinite wisdom thought it would be a really good move to spend a ton of money on the most useless and utterly lazy player this club has ever known. Arsenal are stuck for some time now unless they can find some club dumber than them to take the enigmatic Ozil off their hands.
gambon, you’re blaming Emery for the signings but how do you know it was him who wanted them and not the DOF and the scout? That said I found his line up bizarre yesterday but to say Emery out is a bit knee jerk is it not? Haven’t we got the most points from behind and substitutions etc? Doesn’t that show Emery is good? Who signed the players? Lichsteiner is terrible and I’m not convinced by Leno at all. Torreira and Guendouzi are good though. I’m not convinced Emery is the top level manager we need long term but let’s… Read more »
“Defending is the bane of the clubs existence and certainly something that cant be fixed when you have effectively broken parts to begin with……..They have been horrible for years and its not going to change no matter who is in charge.
So it wasn’t Wenger, it was just his recruitment then by the sounds of it.
Should’ve kept Wenger and let Sven bring in the players. Situation solved?
Great post Pedro, “Just before I go, the absolute atrocity of the exAKB ghouls who came bounding online yesterday like they’d just won the lottery was truly shameful. If you can’t piece together the direct implication of Wenger in our current mess, you truly have no place commenting on football. Taking joy in a loss because you think your average opinions of Wenger having a rough ride over the past 14 years is the height of shit fandom. And yes, there was a lot of that yesterday. Utterly pathetic.” This is the best thing you have written in years. Absolutely… Read more »
Frankee Then why sign Sokratis and Leno and Lichtsteiner at all? Why not utilise those funds straight away for a quicker ball playing centre half like maguire?? Why not flog Ramsey ozil and Mustafi for whatever we could muster? The money we’ve spent this year and only Torriera and guendouzi can be considered anything but a sideways or backwards move Poor planning again. Wether that’s on emery or not is debatable but what is on emery is tonget the players coached to apoint where we don’t gift 5 goals in one match. He has to carry the can for that… Read more »
China if these defensive signings have been decent then why have Arsenal such a poor goals against record again and this was even before the 5 goals shipped yesterday?
You can go on about the unbeaten run but I think many have said it wasn’t a totally convincing run and there were matches were the team were getting away with it. Always looking vulnerable defensively even going unbeaten for that stretch.
If you say these signings are decent bar Lichtsteiner then you are pointing the finger at Emery for yet another poor goals against record this season.
Not a chance am I accepting Emery isn’t good enough. I remember a few seasons ago gambon calling for Emery to replace Wenger. Emery has only signed players that we could afford AND were avaliable in the summer. There is absoutely no way we should be addressing his position 6 months into project ‘cleaning up Wengers mess’ I normally agree with 90% of what Pete says, but unfortunately this post smacks of “I wanted Arteta” The idea that Arteta would’ve somehow come in and addressed all our problems is ridiculous. I will still hold out my judgment on Emery this… Read more »
pedro
the club can fire the manager at anytime. Firing a manager isn’t something new. But I’m sure the board will give him at least till the end of the season.
Also, I’m not liking the banega talks. we need someone better.
China1
Yes, our signings were amazing….that’s why we’re on course to concede more goals…with less clean sheets than last season.
I’ve supported AFC since 1973, so I’ve seen good and bad managers over the years… Like so many of us on this blog, I was happy when Wenger left/was sacked at the end of last season. I didn’t like Emery’s appointment though. I knew it wasn’t the right one for us. Why? Just look at his record with PSG: he should’ve done better with the squad at his disposal. I got the confirmation he really was a mediocre coach when a declining Barca team overturn a 4-0 deficit in the second leg. How could we possibly hire a coach who… Read more »
Benny
Wether emery signed them or not it’s not sven’s job to coach the defence.
I don’t want him sacked but I want to see a marked improvement at the back immediately.
If that means dropping Aubameyang complete to solidify us then let’s do it. If it means 5 at the back then I’m game.
It falls to emery to get that particular facet of the club in order and thus far he’s failed to do it, spectacularly.
“I remember a few seasons ago gambon calling for Emery to replace Wenger.”
Yep.
I was wrong.
I also thought Reyes was gonna be better than Ronaldo.
You know better than that Charlie. Its going to take longer than 5 months to teach defending to a bunch of players who dont even know how to spell the word let alone understand it.
Remember, This is a team of players who were expected to hit the pitch running and ready made because thats what Wenger expected of them.
Just before I go, the absolute atrocity of the exAKB ghouls who came bounding online yesterday like they’d just won the lottery was truly shameful. If you can’t piece together the direct implication of Wenger in our current mess, you truly have no place commenting on football
This… Well said. Fucking disgrace how giddy some where last night.
Who would have thought Emery could make Wenger’s defence strategy look good?
We would be better off with Jay Leno in goal. Where has this lads distribution skillz gone?
Unbelievable. A 5-1 defeat to probably one of the best sides currently in Europe when we are in the state we are in and we all lose our minds and call for Emery, a proven winner.
Sweeties So you don’t think 6 months is enough time to coach your multi million pound defence to the point where it doesn’t capitulate from 1-0 up to 5-1 in 50 mins?? Not just that but actually giving them the goals. Do you think if we signed van Dijk and Vincent kompany this summer that our defensive strategy would be any less chaotic?? Nobody is asking for miracles just to get the basics sufficiently corrected quickly. Otherwise we needn’t have bothered spending on the 3 new players at the back as they’ve been a total waste of £40m thus far… Read more »
You know better than that Charlie. Its going to take longer than 5 months to teach defending to a bunch of players who dont even know how to spell the word let alone understand it.“ Full pre-season and half a seasons football. That’s what he’s had so far. Enough to drastically change things? No. Enough to show positive signs of change? Yes. Except, I don’t see it. We’re as bad this seas as we were last season defensively. We’ve also already been left 4-1 away from home at a top side embarrassingly. Wenger was delivering this remember. If you want… Read more »
Un Na….Seriously, do you honestly think that in todays game of finance that 70 million gets you better than what was bought? Lich and Sokratis bring experience and normally one would believe them to be prudent signings for teaching value a lone. The problem is the same problem, injuries that force the veterans to put in more than they physically can.
Leno? Early days and i didnt hear you complaining much when he was making a difference and staeling points during that unbeaten run?
I said it back in August and i will continue to say it, patience.
Guns
Been saying from the off that he wasn’t as good as cech
Looked much better with cech in goal. He was our best player this year before his injury
At the end of the day I don’t think it matters who’s managing/coaching the team because without 2 – 300million plus being spent over the next 2 transfer windows we haven’t got a snowball’s chance of competing with the current top 4 or preventing Man Utd from overtaking us.
“Yep.
I was wrong.”
On what basis? We probably have the worse defence in the top half of the table right now.
Look at Klopps players in defence in his first season. Now look at them. Haven’t lost.
There’s no way I’m throwing the towel in on Emery. He’s pedigree, has proven and, if you want someone to take on the elite spenders, then he’s done that too.
Un na nai “Then why sign Sokratis and Leno and Lichtsteiner at all?” Well the first two have the paw prints of Mislintat all over them. And Maguire? He would have cost a very tidy sum on his own buying from an EPL club and after the World Cup he had. He would have eaten well into the 70m on his own as a signing. It was about numbers. The new management team wanted more bodies in during the summer. We all know that the Bundesliga is seen as having transfer fees that are seen as not extortionate but if… Read more »
You and i see very different things then, Charlie. In my estimation this team has far and away exceeded expectations. There is a ways to go but i see a marked difference and improvement in the players attitudes and in some, you can see purpose in what they do. Compared to the last number of years this team now has something it didnt have under Wenger – Hope. I will take that any day of the week and that is what i see.
I made a comment the other day about it will take another 2 summers before the squad is sorted and was slagged off by some on here. Too many are looking at the club in a 2 dimensional way, the transition going on isn’t just the squad it’s the whole club from the training ground to the commercial deals. The one thing I do think we need to do is tell Torreira to go and sit is arse on a beach somewhere like Dubai for a week. If we can’t beat Fulham at home and Blackpool in the Cup without… Read more »
“You know better than that Charlie. Its going to take longer than 5 months to teach defending to a bunch of players who dont even know how to spell the word let alone understand it.” But it’s quite a feat to spend £70m and make it worse. 6 months in should we not expect some level of improvement? Maybe 10%, 3%, even just 1%? I live the way people are deferring ANY level if improvement to 2 years down the line. Considering we probably need 50% defensive improvement, what should we expect? First year and £70m spent = 0% improvement… Read more »
Un
Imagine that…cech is better than Leno. Holy moly.
Let’s remeber that Unai Emery holds the record for having a lead and then blowing it to Barca. That was special!
” I will take that any day of the week and that is what i see.”
That’s called delusion.
I’ll give emery this summer and next jan transfer window to sort this mess out.
I’d expect considerable improvement, if not, then I’ll be all in for him to be replaced.
Klopp gutted the entire liverpool squad in 3 years. Milner the only survivor I think? Yet emery has been given 6 months and 1 transfer window.
I’m neither pro nor against, just willing to give him time.
Whats the alternative? Do a manure and have a new manager every 18 months, without the money they have to spend.
Man City spent more on their defence than Canada did on their military.
We couldn’t defend a sweet placed on a high shelf from a dwarf.
Emery isn’t any different from wenger. How can you score a goal only to concede few minutes later? It happened against man utd you expect a good coach to address this but not emery till it happened again last night.
what are you going to do now Gambon, walk off in a huff like you did a few years ago because you didnt like what you saw?
Do one already, its what you do best anyway.
Here’s where I think you’re wrong Pedro. We had appointed Emery very early. He had sometime to assess the squad and so did Mslintat and co. , We knowingly bought Sokratis , Lichtsteiner, Torreira , Guendouzi and Leno. Apart from Guendouzi and Torreira all 3 of them have been poor to average at various times of this season. Yesterday being the glaring example. Msilintat and co. fucked up this transfer window not Wenger. I hope they have better eye on players than this or else we’ll have a hard time upon us . Dont blame this on Wenger . This… Read more »