With the amount of cash Man U gets thrown around, Fergie time and other bias refereeing. Of course those are great time under Ferguson. Now those days are long gone.
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Surely if Arsenal have no wingers, they might as well make use of their best assets and play a diamond, with Laca and Auba up front?
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Emery’s Way. Just like our defense can’t play from the back and they still force them to do so. Cech looks uncomfortable but that new Emery signing Sokratis wasn’t exactly helpful.
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Dunno if Sokratis is an Emery signing, but he certainly was a weird one.
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I think our defense can play from the back though, just not Cech. That’s why Leno’s omission so far is extremely frustrating.
Mustafi is fairly good as far as CBs go at playing out and the fullbacks are good on the ball.
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I never understood the Sokratis signing, not top quality now and doesn’t have the potential to get any better than he is now.
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I think we just needed an experienced CB to cover for Koscielny this season, next summer I fully expect us to go for a top CB tbh
It definitely isn’t a long term signing
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Football365 is the best football website and the only one I read. Another good article from them
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Emery is not managing the football club in the same capacity Wenger did, he is just a coach. That was made very clear when he was hired. He may have some consulting role in transfer business but there is an entirely different unit in the club’s structure now that handles transfers.
Emery is a believer that the system is more important than the players. There was an instance in his career as a young coach where he played all reserve players to prove to the players just that, that the system is more important, or something along those lines.
I think that is also part of the reason why he was hired, because he is willing to work with average footballers (like Xhaka and Mustafi for example) knowing well that the club won’t (because they can’t or aren’t willing to I don’t know) compete with the financial super powers in modern football.
At the end of the day we have to accept we have some pretty average players in this squad and that is not going to change over one night. Emery will have to work with them, he has no choice. Let’s give him time to work on his ideas and judge him no sooner than the end of the season. And let’s not blame transfer activity he has no handle on, on him.
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I am willing to wait 2 seasons, as I believe unless someone is a total calamity, they should be given atleast 2 seasons to make their mark.
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That’s true. I meant lets pass judgement on his work not before the end of the season, not call for his head.
Our football hasn’t been convincing but I don’t agree with some posters saying things aren’t really different. What I have seen from Arsenal is that there is at least an attempt of collective pressing, but that still needs some time to be further developed and the way they are trying to build up has more thought behind. Obviously there are some glaring holes too right now, like the lack of coverage for the fullbacks when going forward and sometimes Arsenal is very lethargic like last season. For example yesterday between minute 35 and 45 of the game is an example of that. It does seem like Arsenal are trying to do stuff a bit differently.
As far as the results go. The schedule has not been favourable at all. Emery had to deal with two of the best teams in the League in his first to games.
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But what are fair expectations in season 3 than? Because I don’t think Emery has the quality at all to make a title contender of this team. And you yourself believe that we don’t have the resources to compete with the rich clubs anyway. Should have compete for top four in season 3 and are goals met in that case?
Yes that’s true.
Considering our spending capacity, for Arsenal to win PL, it would take series of lucky breaks like we had in the season when Leicester won the PL; or couple of our players get sold for 150-200m which we can invest to create a functional team.
Otherwise I don’t see how Arsenal can possibly win PL against financial giants.
So if the landscape is constant, I say Emery should
- at the very minimum try to be above Spurs next season
- finish in Top 4 atleast once in these 2 seasons
- Semifinal of FA cup & Europa cup in 2 seasons (Successful season if he wins them on top of Top 4 finish)
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As long as the top four clubs have the managers that they have and the quality that they have I think top four is a little but of an unrealistic expectation. Obviously we should compete for it, but if we don’t make it I can’t really hold that against Emery because of what I think of him (simply not as good as Guardiola, Klopp, Mourinho and even Sarri). I think our best hopes would be a Manchester United implosion, but on the other hand they have build that insane financial foundation to fall back on.
Shouldn’t we be trying to get a better manager then in that case ?
We should. That is why I wasn’t that happy with his appointment…
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Very good read!
While I agree with you, my fear is, we might also have to accept that we might not compete for the title for a long while as I don’t see us being competitive in the market in order to build a team that will challenge. Expecting Misnlintat to uncover rough diamonds at dirt cheap prices will only take us so far. We can spend some amount of money but the moment we are in direct competition with a big European team for a player, I don’t see us coming away with the player. Emery might have all the right ideas but unless he gets all the right tools, our current status of a top 6 team might continue for a while.
I very much agree with some of thoughts about the time that Emery needs here. Some people I feel are wanting something visably different too soon, but 'UnWengerising" process is going to take ages. Months, and even years. Even if Emery only does two years at Arsenal, someone had to take the first steps of rebuilding the club.
It seems clear already after four games that attacking wise, we seem pretty decent for the season ahead, but what happens at the back will make or break where we finish and what we can achieve fullstop. This is probably the worse Arsenal defense in a very long time. Maybe some of our older Gooners might be able to date back a point in the early 80s or 70s for a comparsion to now, but with such a leaky defense, it’s going to be tough.
Until we can get in better players at the back, or the players Emery wants to make this team work, I fear the only way we’re going to have to deal with matches is to do the ‘Liverpool’ method of previous seasons, and that’s just to score as many goals as possible, no matter how much and often we concede in return. This team will struggle to keep things tight it seems against most teams, so it almost feels like we may as well just attack attack attack anyways for the time being until we’re able to adopt something better later on.
In any case, this season, I just care about the results, and worry about improving the style as the season goes on. Winning breeds confidence, and that’s something we didn’t do a lot of last season.
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