Don’t ever quote me again unless you are going to give me the necessary respect you fucking prick.
1 Like
If the board don’t back Emery in the next window with at least two top signings then will really know who is to blame for the shift in power between us and spurs.
The board know full well what is going on and what’s needed to sort it out.
They have always done the bare minimum when it comes to transfers and rarely do we make big signings unless they have just sold a world class player or are under pressure from supporters who can’t understand why they are paying some of the highest prices in Europe to go and see a team desperately short of quality.
How is Emery is supposed to work with possibly the worst group of defenders among the top PL clubs and get a top four place?
How is it possible for one of the most profitable clubs in Europe to have Mustafi as their best CB?
What a joke
The problem is that everything you’re doing is based solely on stats without every really looking at the wider context. When Emery arrived at Sevilla, they had won only one trophy in the previous six seasons to Emery’s arrival and had finished outside the top 8 in the previous two seasons. His arrival subsequently lead him to win an unprecedented treble of European trophies, secure two top 5 finishes and a Copa Del Rey final run. Even if his top 5 finishes in the league don’t impress you, the success in Europe (the longest cup competition any club can compete in at top level) and a good run in the Spanish domestic cup are impressive. The fact of the matter is – his body of work at Sevilla was impressive.
No matter how much you want to do your usual revisionist routine and try to detract from it – what he accomplished at Sevilla constitutes a very good body of work. He has won a quarter of all major trophies that Sevilla has won in its history so no matter how much you try to detract from his Sevilla reign, that’s a mighty impressive stat and he did it all whilst maintaining a good league position.
And even when we draw back to Valencia, let’s be sensible here and remember that he arrived at a very unstable Valencia that had been hit big time by time by the collapse of the financial market which obviously meant they had to halt work on the new stadium. A stadium which remains unfinished over 10 years after construction started. He arrived at a selling club and had to contend with Silva and Villa being shipped out during the latter stages of his reign. Malaga were also a team on the up at the time, Sevilla still had a good squad and Atleti had a much better squad than their league positioning suggested with Asenjo, Godin, Falcao, Diego, Miranda, Tiago, Gabi, Turan, Juanfran, Luis and a young Koke, Courtois. Obviously it was early days in Simeone’s reign (think he arrived at some point during the early winter) but the point stands that he didn’t have a runaway third best squad in the league his entire time there and like I said he is responsible for 75% of Valencia’s top three finishes in the years that followed the 2004 title win. That’s a large enough sample for us to be able to conclude that he did a good job and was a stable influence at Valencia – something they haven’t had since.
In 14 years they have managed 4 top 3 finishes and he is responsible for 3 of them. So to sit there and act like he merely met expectation at a club that have been in financial turmoil for years until Lim took over and started investing heavily (albeit stupidly due to the Mendes link) is just not right.
You can be balanced about Unai Emery without really need to go too far to either side. He’s a good manager, with a good track record of success wherever he’s gone. He brings stability to each club he arrives at and has a good haul of trophies this decade to show for his hard work. As much as I will agree with anyone that says he wasn’t a success at PSG I’d argue that the Monaco team he lost to was one of the very best in Europe that season and their form in both domestic league and European competition indicate that.
Emery’s biggest failure is not managing to convince the necessary players at PSG to trust him and follow him. Unfortunately every manager has their difficulties wherever they go and it’s just not as big a stain on his record as some people like to suggest. He still won 7 trophies in 2 seasons and oversaw perhaps their greatest European result vs. Barcelona (followed subsequently by a massive collapse laden in controversy).
Do I think Emery is the best manager we could have gone for? No I don’t. I’m a huge Sarri fan and would have loved to have him here at Arsenal. But he has his drawbacks. He has a poor record in Europe, doesn’t rotate enough and doesn’t really have any tactical flexibility. I like Setien too, but his football comes at a huge cost defensively where his team concede a hell of a lot of goals due to their weakness in the defensive phase. I’m also a huge fan of Allegri but he has plenty of flaws himself. Then there’s Conte, who I think is probably one of the best tacticians on the planet but again he has his drawbacks.
You could pick flaws in every single manager and we’ve got a manager who has his own flaws. But for all of those flaws he’s a hard working manager with a track record of improving players, an obsession with tactics and enough tactical flexibility to give us Arsenal fans something different after the post prime Wenger years where we rarely changed the way we played.
I’m always happy to engage in debates with people but there’s a way to go about it without always coming across like you’ve never gotten anything wrong. You’ve gotten plenty wrong in your time here so perhaps you should stop being so self-aggrandising. From your downplaying of CR7, championing of Sanogo to many more you’ve got a hell of a lot massively wrong in your time. So perhaps humble yourself and engage in some good quality debate without always trying to degrade everyone around you.
And I’m telling you this now - if you respond in the way you chose to respond to me earlier when I was merely trying to respond to one particular facet of your post - I won’t bother to engage with you. I’m not here to be spoken to like that I’m here to enjoy debating with other football fans.
18 Likes
Killed it 
2 Likes
This is why arguing that he has to get us back into the CL straight away or be replaced is completely ludicrous. I’ve seen some people suggest that we need to be this strict with our managers, but if the power structure above Emery isn’t going to provide him with the resources he needs to succeed then it makes no sense to hold him to a standard that’s equal to managers at other top clubs who get the backing of their owners/board much more strongly in the market.
The main culprit behind our decline in recent years was certainly our last manager, but the board was always a disfunctional piece in our system and we still have that problem now. Even though the manager has changed for the better this season, we still have a ceiling that isn’t high enough because of this boardroom right now.
We desperately need Emery to be backed in this upcoming window or we are in serious trouble for the second half of the campaign.
3 Likes
Also Klopp and Guardiola underperformed in their first seasons. Imagine sacking them and how each clubs fortunes maybe different
I am a bit of a prick some times but very mature of you
I couldn’t agree more.
No other manager could turn this mess around without the backing of the board and if it doesn’t happen, and we remain out of the CL, there is only the board to blame.
Emery has proved he can adapt to different situations and he has turned things around from complacency to more urgency, with the same players Wenger had, but there is only so much you can do with defensive players that wouldn’t look out of place in club struggling for relegation.
How this has been allowed to happen is unbelievable, and Wenger and the board’s negligence is clearly to blame, so now Wenger has gone we have to rely on our tight fisted board to back Emery in the transfer market.
1 Like
But I only respectfully disagreed with you mate.
For me Emery has done a amazing job so far with the players he’s got to work with. There is a lot of dross still left behind from the Wenger era, going to take 2 to 3 seasons at best to get a team challenging for a PL, that’s if he get’s support from the board and Sven. Big spending is needed, I don’t mean buying 80 million pound players, but buy smartly and throw in a big name here or there.
He’s got the likes of Bellerin, Xhaka and Mustafi back playing to a decent quality, only I still don’t think Xhaka or Mustafi are good enough imo. The new signings have improved us in a way. Still think the likes of Iwobi, Miki, Cech, Kos, Elneny need shipping out. I admire the balls he has to not pick Ozil, cause half our fanbase think the guy is some saint when in fact he’s been a disappointment imo.
The only players I think that will be in Emery’s plans will be, Leno, Torreira, Guendouzi, Auba, Laca, Bellerin, Holding, and Sokratis. I think the likes of Nelson and Smith Rowe will be a major part of our first team. But I wouldn’t be surprise the likes of Ozil, Miki, Elneny,Kos won’t be joining Ramsey and Welbeck on their way out of Arsenal come the summer.
5 Likes
Again the whole context of that exchange was based on the fact mrhappy said something he did not agree with and on that basis said it was irrelevant. When he was called out on it he edidted it. This is the reason I don’t post much or in certain subject, because the moment you disagree you get attacked and made the other. This hive mentality is annoying at best
What a post. 
1 Like
Wenger literally didn’t have a clue what was going on since about 2011. The amount of young players that weren’t developed properly and the recruitment for about the final 7 seasons of his career was absolutely appalling.
We were able to attract world class talent like Ozil and Sanchez to the club, yet he couldn’t ever find the correct £20m players to put around them in order to build a balanced unit. He absolutely would NOT sign a player like Torreira when it was obvious to every Arsenal fan on the planet that we needed a player like that that was even half of that quality for over a decade.
My wish, and it’s a very foolish one probably, is that Sven and Raul are good enough at what they do that we can find good players for bargain prices and actually support Emery with proper quality.
1 Like
Uh no, Shamrock told mhappy that what he said was not relevant to the question posed, he proceeded to argument himself why he thought so. None of that was inflammatory, diminutive or disrespectful in any way and all of it was part of normal discourse. Then it was met with personal abuse out of weakness.
I think your argument is irrelevant to the discussion, is in no way something that should be met with personal abuse. If you feel disrespected because someone told you that he doesn’t think what you said was relevant to what was discussed, then maybe you are a person who is not ready to have a civilized discussion with people who don’t share your point of view.
You yourself told me that I didn’t refute his point but in fact I proved it, when I had no intention to do so. I find that hugely disrespectful - I think I am a smart enough person to know what message the words that I type convey.
So because you have been so disrespectful to me, I feel that I am in my fair right to call you a fucking cunt!
Please tell me what is wrong or disrespectful about thinking what somebody said is irrelevant to a particular question. If you look back I explain my reasoning and as for the editing bullshit I’ve already outlined I did no such thing other than to correct my grammar. Why the fuck would I? Maybe you and your brother could get the fuck over it.
Call me what you feel like someone on the internet is not going to hurt my feelings. It just shows how pointless having a conversation in this forum as it descends into utter stupidity and childish antics when opposing views clash
So you and your peers like to throw a tantrum whenever you like but when you’re fed your own medicine, the taste is bitter.
I understand.
I did an analysis of Emery’s history previously - I’ll go back and do another round with more detail fwiw… I will say this feels very much like a debate about Trump or Wenger back in the day… people with a position aren’t moving and are using data their own way to support said position - the irony is that the people that are defending Emery aren’t really defending him… they are simply suggesting to wait a bit to see. And any comparisons to Pep or Klopp or Poch are intellectually interesting but not relevant to the actual selection since they weren’t available.
To add some substance for now, I will say my assessment so far based on all evidence is mixed… there are some positives (more resilience, string of results without playing particularly well, we competed in every big game save perhaps the first one against City and that was so early, it is a bit hard to judge, and we do have moments of attacking flair)…
Having said that, there are some continued glaring problems (slightly harder to judge here b/c all of these are also holdovers): defensive frailty, suspect against counters (Torry has helped slightly here), long periods of games looking discombobulated, and massive gap at wing… hasn’t helped that Ozil has apparently fallen off of a cliff.
I sort of feel like this year is like a roller-coaster ride… we just need to hang on… get as many points as possible and try to crack back into top 4, do the “season of sorting” that I talked about last summer (take stock of what we have and don’t have)… We NEED to know:
- Is Xhaka for real or is the latest stuff a false dawn?
- WTF is a Leno?
- Are AMN, Nketiah, Nelson, ESR, or any other youngsters going to be useful pieces moving forward and when (at least with AMN and Nelson in particular, they are super important to figure out).
- Ozil - ???
- Iwobi - guy drives me bonkers at times but he has some ingredients… I’d say I am not optimistic atm but sometimes am too hasty to write people off
- The shambles that is our defense with an aging Koss…
If we go into next year with most of those questions unanswered, that seems to me like a missed opportunity and a crucial milestone failure and perhaps a bad sign for next year+.
6 Likes
I think Wenger bought Ozil and Sanchez not because we needed them but because they were, as he said, “too good to turn down” for the sort of money we got them for.
Wenger and the club’s attitude towards transfers seemed to be to buy the best bargains, rather than filling positions we were desperate for quality in, with the best players available.
So consequently positions like DM, CB and striker were neglected and it didn’t matter how good Ozil and Sanchez were if we had a rubbish defence and poor strikers.
So we have a team now which is completely lacking in any cohesion and Emery has had to come in and clear up the complete mess Wenger has left behind.
I don’t blame Wenger entirely for the shambolic way we handle transfers, contracts and wages, but he was certainly responsible for the complacency and lack of planning in matches.
A lot of the blame must go to the board who have sat back and done the bare minimum, considering the size and wealth of the club, and the supporters have to rely on Kroenke, who is partly responsible for this mess, to give Emery the financial backing get us out of it.
So a message to Kroenke, stop counting your money and start giving back to the supporters who deserve a lot better and start spending it on some decent players.
3 Likes
Very well thought.