He didn't really get a free pass last season. When last season ended he was getting it from all corners. He blew the top four, blew the final etc. While he deserved some criticism for those, he inherited the 6th best side in the league, a very unbalanced squad.
The watford debacle was unacceptable. It was the first time where I even lost some confidence in Emery, so I don't blame people if they want him out now. I was talking about people wanting him out before this season even kicked off.
We had a good transfer window even if we haven't been able to field all our new signings yet. Which makes the lack of any progress even more damming. I will still give him till the end of the season, there is plenty of time to turn things around. He needs to do it fast though and now he hasn't got much room for any major setbacks.
He wasn't free from criticism completely no, for sure, there were performances that fell way short and of course people will be disappointed when you lose a major final BUT in my opinion for the most part the larger portion of the fanbase and media understood he was working with what he had available to him.
The pressure is on this season and rightly so.
The problem we have now is that he is in his last year of his contract so, we will come to January and be in a position where we are not only looking into the transfer market but also negotiating his contract / negotiating with replacements, ideally to maximise the window you want to be focused on playing staff not internal affairs, if the rest of the 1st half of the season is relatively poor i could see keeping our powder dry in the market and the focus shifting to the coaching role,
Unless the new structure means we do both, Edu and Raul still identify players that fit our remit/play style/ethos and we just slot a new coach into that regime and they either sink or swim