Unai Emery

It’s not even just about statistics, we were just boring and predictable to watch. Lethargic football, dinosaur or non existent tactics and strategy for years. Gradually we became worse.

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Agreed.

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lol I haven’t been back because I barely read, except for news (as not having twitter this remains the best place for me to get Arsenal news). Given that there’s literally no regular posters here who aren’t drinking the inevitable kool-aid post Wenger (as few people realised quite how shit Wenger was) aside from @SDGooner and @AussieGooner and @A.F. if he’s still around there’s no need to respond to the rampant fanboyism. Your post is a good example why. Mad triumphalism when we’re not even doing better than in Wenger’s penultimate season, when we’re for the first time in 4th place (by like a point?) ahead of a Spurs club who didn’t spend a cent in the summer, and that after winning the home match of the NLD, something that even Wenger won pretty regularly in his last years–it’s pretty hilarious. He obviously also hasn’t been at all the complete opposite of what I said…he’s played with Kolasinac as a wing-back the last two matches, one of them at home…he phased Ramsey out (and we’re losing him for nothing) because he couldn’t accommodate two creative attacking players in Özil and Ramsey…he might be phasing Özil out in favour of a more defensive attacking midfielder in Mkhitaryan (shit), if you paid any attention to the Chelsea match you saw that he threw it away with inexplicable coward tactics in the second half when Chelsea were very much for the taking in their transition to a very different style of play under Sarri. In short, we’re 4th, something I said before the season was feasible given Spurs’ inaction in the market and United’s predictable collapse. Just because people didn’t realise how shit both the recruitment and the coaching was in the last years under Wenger and how that would inevitably improve under a competent manager and that us performing more or less to expectations and scoring goals doesn’t mean I was wrong about a thing…I also said, as with most managers like Emery without a concrete philosophy, that there would no doubt be a kind of honeymoon period where he played as positive tactics as possible to adhere to the mandate of attacking and possession football he was given.

That said, there are positives-- hopefully the good things I’m reading about three fids a day is true, Gazidis is gone, Mlisintat looks to know his shit, as Guendouzi and Torreira were fantastic signings, and Sokratis a good under the radar signing, so on the personnel and recruitment side things look very promising indeed, especially with Gazidis out of the picture. Emery remains a cynical hire, someone whose absolute ceiling is taking advantage of United’s Mourinho mess, and mess in general, and Spurs Spursy mess, and hopefully with Gazidis out of the picture we will make a better one in a couple years when Guardiola and/or Klopp maybe could finish their cycle at their respective clubs and move on. Still, perhaps I am just naturally more of an optimist, or expect more optimism and ambition of a big club from Arsenal, but it remains depressing to know what our ceiling is with this manager in the coming years. Thankfully the good recruitment team in place looks to put us in good position if we can a) fire Emery in a couple seasons instead of becoming comfortable or happy with 4th place type mediocrity and b) make a good hire–or have a top option available (hopefully Arteta doesn’t hate us now if he turns to be a top manager in that time, because Nagelsmann will have any option he wants, Setién looks like he’ll end up at Barça at some point, etc.). (As with all cynical hires, the real fear, and depressing thought, is that it will be less a two year thing and more a three-four year thing…especially if he wins an FA Cup or something…even Valverde looks like he’s going to make it through two years at Barça and who knows if more)

Anyways, enjoy the honeymoon period and the inevitable post-Wenger boon and try not to drive out the few remaining decent posters in the meantime. :+1:

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Big test against United. We’ve had moments like this, even getting carried away thinking we’re all that, only to be slapped the next game. Hell, at our worst, last season, we paradoxically pulled shit like this.
If we win against United that’s a BIG, BIG STATEMENT that we ain’t fooling around.

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:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

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Oh look who’s emerged out of the dungeon, still as his pessimistic and poisionous self :arteta:

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Haha I’m not fucking reading that but welcome back boyo.

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Atm on track for 81 points, an 18 point improvement on last year. We haven’t hit 80 since 2007-2008.

But we’ve been around the 30 point mark after 14 games a fair few times, so as I’ve maintained a lot let’s reserve judgement to the middle of February.

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You had to @ him, and look what happened.

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Good to see you back @AbouCuellar

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I think the game against the Scum showed the impact Unai’s had on this team, the club and the fans. The players all looked hungry and eager to grab the initiative from the get go and for once, we took the lead in one of the big games. But then 5 minutes of confusion along with some dodgy refereeing changed the complexion of the game, with us going into the break in an all too familiar way, trailing our opponents. But then he made the changes he thought were needed (as he tends to do), and we had a storming second half. The passion you saw when Laca scored and then when Torreira scored has been missing from this club for a while. How long has it been since we have had a team and a manager that is as passionate as us fans, especially for a derby. Unai really has these players playing for him now.

And how refreshing is it to have manager who knows more than your average fan in terms of tactics, substitutions etc.

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Let’s not create fiction

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But four or five of those nine Wenger seasons are “around 30 points”, or more than 30.

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Pretty far fetched to say 27 or 26 is around 30. Or 28.

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Will be intrigued to see what the future holds for us around the Christmas to March period. We always had a dip in form with Wenger through this period and found our good work undone during this slog.

I’d love every game to be as high intensity as yesterday’s but realistically, we need to grind results out the hard way from time to time too.

I didn’t include 26 points, if you look at the numbers I used. If someone is speaking approximately, which Aussie clearly was, then I would say that 27 and 28 are numbers that are pretty similar to the number 30.

Its quite bold to label his statement as being “creating fiction” and when I saw that I expected the points tallies to be reflective of the boldness of the statement. I didn’t think they were really.

But each to their own, we can view this differently. I think having 28 points is very much close to thirty, you don’t.

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28 is practically 30. This has vibes of that great, great Arsenal tale between two budding supporters :laughing:

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I apologize but I have a mathematically deformed way of thinking. From a stats point of view, Wenger’s last 9 season’s points tallies’ mean, median and average are 27. This suggests we weren’t around the 30 point mark a lot of the time. You need to be on 29, 30 or 31 a lot more often to be around that mark. Emery clearly beats Wenger’s performance app. 80% of the time, to say that we were around that same kind of performance most of the time under Wenger quite clearly isn’t true. You can’t really say we have been around 30 points most of the time when we have been below 30 points 80% of the time. That’s like me saying we have been about the 3rd best team in England most of the time in the past few years when we have like one 3rd and six 4th places.

And that is looking at the numbers purely statistically, without even counting the different contributing factors like how much more competetive the EPL is in it’s current climate, where Wenger’s best tally in those years puts him in 3rd place in the present year, or the fact that Unai is working with Wenger’s legacy, shuffling someone else’s construction, while Arsene worked under his own rules and created his own teams.

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