Unai Emery: Adios

[Morning_woody]

Situation isn’t that bad, we’re floating around our target position for this season.

Situation isn’t that bad, we’re floating around our target position for this season.

Yeah, my mistake.
I guess I should be more thankful that we are only 4 points behind City

 

[Vantastico]

Let me preface by saying that Unai Emery's Arsenal, led by captain Xhaka, is my least favorite representation of Arsenal of all time.

Even then, I kind of see the point in holding Pepe accountable for that miss, because at the top level you don't often get second chances. Subbing him off was a stoic method of teaching that doesn't boost Pepe's morale but hinges on his own intrinsic motivation to come back stronger. Yes, it's probably a huge f'in blow to his confidence, knowing full-well that the manager won't back him even though he was having a fine game overall. At the same time, for a manager hell-bent on exerting his authority (e.g. the Özil saga), it is directly in line with his personal philosophy. I will acknowledge that Emery is currently in dire straits, and losing 1-0 to Sheffield probably wasn't the most credible timing for him to make a decision like that, but I get it. Pepe needs to put that sitter away, and he better show up in front of goal next game.

Had we gone up right then and there, we probably would have sealed the win with our counter-attacking set-up as well. It's therefore not hard to see why Emery was stressing that miss so heavily. On the other hand, being Arsenal, the defensive mindset that Emery goes into every game with is loathsome. Approaching every single game by stating that "it is going to be very hard" and trying to win 1-0 on 7 shots is small-club mentality. We have +£200m invested in our attack yet we can only beat Fulham comfortably by greater than a 2 goal margin. Something isn't adding up there.

You can imagine the frustation of our (star) players, playing under a man who can hardly communicate with them properly, in a position of full power in regards to our tactics, line-ups and the overall culture of the dressing room, yet here we are: playing boring football without achieving any results, and all of this is happening seemingly without any consequence (the way we bottled the end of last year was a sackable offense imo).

If we do miss out on CL in a year like this, it will be an egregious waste of talent and resources. If (when) we slip up again in similar fashion in the next couple of weeks, I fully expect Emery to get the sack, or else the blame of our failings isn't solely on him.

One last thing to let my frustrations out on: The Guendouzi-Xhaka partnership is dreadful to watch and whenever you see the two of them on the teamsheet, you can be certain that you're gonna be in for a classic Emeryball-snoozefest. Worst of all is, it doesn't even offer the defensive stability that is intended, let alone our glaringly awful build-up because we lack every bit of creativity in the centre of the park.

Hence, we rely heavily on crossing to create chances.... so why not play Tierney yesterday? What has god awful Kolasinac even done lately to deserve his starting spot? Ask Emery, and he'll probably give you a slurred answer about our god-awful short corner kick-tactics.


Tldr: this is a slight rant and #EmeryOut.

 

[Rex Stone]

 

[GDeep™]

Posted earlier in the day. This despite a spend of 150M plus on a GK, two senior CBs, a DM from Italy, Pepe etc. Auba too, Wenger only had him for a few months - then you have a fit Laca, who was carrying an injury during the last Wenger season.

Gone backwards. Been saying it for a while and I kept getting shot down.

 

[Tir Na Nog]

I laugh because for the last couple of years the argument against Wenger staying was that things couldn't get any worse. Well judging by these statistics they have and then when you look past the statistics the football is worse too.

It was widely accepted that Wenger had to go during that period, the results were simply unacceptable. Well why should Emery's results be considered acceptable now when he's doing worse having spent quite a lot of money since he's been here? Torreira, Lichsteiner, Leno, Guendouzi, Sokratis, Luiz, Pepe, Ceballos, Suarez, Tierney all brought into the club and he's done worse than Wenger's worst run. That's over 150 million worth of transfers as well as having the benefit of Aubameyang being brought in just a few months before him and Lacazette the season before. So that's 250 million+ worth of talent brought in and he hasn't been able to improve anything. He hasn't improved the football, the results, our attack, our defence, he hasn't done better in getting some balance in the team, he got rid of Ramsey one of our best performers and big game players, is not playing our most highly paid player, had a falling out with our captain, got rid of Monreal when he'd be a better backup than Kolasinac, brought in Denis Suarez for a pointless loan spell where he wasn't used. He bottled a great chance to finish top 4 by failing to beat Palace and Brighton at home. Failing to get more than 1 win out of 6 fixtures against Everton, Watford, Palace, Wolves, Leicester and Brighton. Only getting 4 points from a possible 18. Prioritising EL only to get embarrassed 4-1 by Chelsea. Then we see this season, conceding 31 shots to Watford, losing to Sheffield United with only 2 shots on target, screwing up the NLD finding ourselves 2-0 down having to fight back, playing to conservatively against United in a game we could have won, just scraping by in all our home wins not a single convincing performance.

A list of sackable offences.

 

[Divided_Pie]

I kind of see the point in holding Pepe accountable for that miss, because at the top level you don't often get second chances. Subbing him off was a stoic method of teaching that doesn't boost Pepe's morale but hinges on his own intrinsic motivation to come back stronger. Yes, it's probably a huge f'in blow to his confidence, knowing full-well that the manager won't back him even though he was having a fine game overall. At the same time, for a manager hell-bent on exerting his authority (e.g. the Özil saga), it is directly in line with his personal philosophy.

This is another example of shifting blame to his players instead of owning up to his own failures. Same thing he did to Özil in the EL final when he built a game plan around using his creative number 10 to man-mark the opposing #6 instead of doing what he’s actually good at.

Does he think Pepe chose to miss his chance? Does he think he missed it because he wasn’t trying hard enough? To hang this loss on a player on the verge of breaking out after a successful international break when his confidence is fragile is horrible player management.

When has Emery ever admitted to a mistake or accepted blame for a loss? Coward. Fraud. Imposter of a coach. Remove this cancer of a human from this club as soon as possible.

 

[GunnerUK]

I can understand the frustration with Emery seems we play with little Identity if not any and play seems sideways and lacks a clinical attacking formula. But we should see if he achieves the minimal target of finishing top 4.

It was our second loss of the season same as City, Chelsea & Leicester I still think it’s obtainable and still think Emery is capable of pulling it off.

 

[celestis]

This one got me good

Coke? No wonder his teeth were ****ed

 

[yorch44]

Talking about your home?

 

[Rimaal]

The fecker needs to go.

I've called for Wenger's sacking for at least the last 4 seasons of his tenure, but at this point I'd welcome Wenger back with open arms.

 

[Ash10]

Xhaka is the perfect captain for him.
Both belong in some mid table club, both are cowards who always blame others for their own failings.

We need to kick these frauds out asap

 

[Flying Okapis]

Right now we have a terrible identity if we have one at all

Our identity is exactly what Evra said.

 

[gunner4lyfe]

To all the people clamoring for Wenger. If he were still here the signings we got most likely would not have been made. He would have probably given some undeserving players bigger contracts and we woukd still have a lot of deadwood on the books. Lets not act like it would be all rosey. His time was up. Just like Unai's time should be up now.
Question: Would Raul be the one responsible for sacking him or is it solely down to the board?

 

[Whickham]

I'm still not sure what his philosophy is, we don't high press, our passing out from the back is still horrible, we don't have a fixed/working midfield pairing.

Crystal Palace game on Sunday should be the last game for vampire Unai Emery as an Arsensl manager, no matter what the result will be, Unai needs to go ASAP, i would be very pleased if Ljungberg / Wenger took over his position.

Also we really miss Mesut Özil in regular squad, i think he's the only player who provides us a lot of assists, and, it proves dropping him from the squad is a huge mistake!.

 

[krackpot]

Euro games are much more fun than the league. We play less ****tier.

He gets this season unless our football improves . I'll follow the league results on the internet and phone, and probably stop watching altogether until he leaves.

 

[Ewarwoowar]

The whole point behind building from the back is to attract the opposition and create a 3 vs 3-4 situation at the attacking end of the pitch.

But Emery doesn't exploit that at all, instead of using his wingers to stretch their defence and open up the space for through or long balls, he instructs them to come deep to "help" his defenders get out of extremely difficult positions through short passes in his own half, but what actually happens is that he's inviting pressure because as soon as the wingers are pressed down they run out options and passing angles become too tight and suddenly the opposition is all over us in our own half.

This pattern of play repeats itself over and over and over, Defenders play it wide to full backs who play it short to wingers coming deep who have no option but to flick it to midfield where its congested already because of pressure and the ball is lost very quickly.

Instead of using the space, and push their defenders back, Emery stubbornly insists on this pattern of play thinking that with proper training they will be able to get out of these tight situations with short precise passing every time which is completely unrealistic. It is very difficult to do even with top technical players let alone players who are average technically like our defenders and midfielders.

Obviously Emery has lots of other faults and the team is so painful to watch, but this point really tops it all for me as it happens time and time every few minutes throughout every single match.

Yes Emery treating the PL like it's continental league still,, and still has not worked out the PL is faster with less space to do the pedestrian **** he got us doing.

 

[Dennis_Bergkamp_10]

The stuff he pulled in Russia, Spain and France is funny but doesn't matter really. As @GDeep™ is saying, we have invested a ****load and look worse than under Wenger. After 70 games I've seen enough.

Emery won't cut it here.

 

[Rex Stone]

Can’t believe I’ve watched a video of our manager lipsing a woman in a bar.

Didn’t need to see that.

 

[Ewarwoowar]

Can’t believe I’ve watched a video of our manager lipsing a woman in a bar.

Didn’t need to see that.

If we could only get the opposition to don a looky likey mask on the pitch we might see some proper action, although I'd still fancy she be the one on top.

 

[Sanis]

As i feared after his appointment, his career at Spartak Moscow was actually a clear indication of what kind of manager he is. Spartak was a team which historically had attacking philosophy and it changed with his arrival, string of poor results and dire football and he was sacked just after 6 months. Even the players abused him publicly through media.