Unai Emery

I’m never really “sold” on 'keeper signings tbh. I felt cheated when we only signed Peter Cech in the summer a couple of summers back. It doesn’t tend to fill me with excitement.

I’d rather outfield players. Indeed, if we did have Alyson or Kepa, would we have conceded any fewer goals? I doubt it very much.

As long as a 'keeper we sign isn’t riddled with calamities (a la Almunia and Fabianski) we’re all right.

Case in point, even in our Invincibles season, we weren’t blessed with the best GK. Lehmann’s hot headedness cost us points. We only really saw the best of Jens in the couple of seasons or so thereafter

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Indeed, and it’s interesting how he’s lost that rep in his post Arsenal days

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We would never buy Oblak, he is not a ball-playing keeper whatsoever, the whole point with buying a new keeper is to buy one that is good with his feet and Leno is and Emeryball needs that, which is probably exactly why the choice fell on him out of some theoretical bunch of candidates, that’s what he wants. You don’t just play “a good keeper” in all systems nowadays. De Gea would be equally inefficient as a buy for example even if he is maybe the best keeper in the world on his day. If we wanted a great shot-stopper we would’ve spent the money elsewhere and gone with Cech.

That’s probably the same reason we spent on Gonzo and Torreira, we want players who can sit back in midfield, there were none in the current squad. Just like we also need better wide players and fewer central attacking midfielders which is why Ramsey and Özil aren’t automatic inclusions anymore and we should get better wide players.

Our defenders play badly but more importantly they play exactly the same as they did a year ago which is more worrying and might signal that it is not the players who are at fault but the system around them. I hope I’m wrong though and time will tell more of the story I suppose.

I agree they may not have abided by Emery’s wishes in the market in summer but I do imagine they had a conversation, lined up a few realistic targets of various styles and let him have some say. What I also agree with is that Leno is still a tier below the absolute world class keepers in this mould, perhaps headed by the likes of Ter Stegen atm, but they’re fashion and cost a lot and we’re… being good with money.

A worrying thought about Emery as a stop gap is that every new manager needs their type of players for their setup, we used to collect central midfielders like they were stamps back with Wenger (and most of the time he was great at handling them, it’s just the last few signings with Xhaka that was unusually poor in that area), and now we need fewer of them and more sitting ones and wide ones, so if we shift a few of the old types out and get a few of the new types in, swap manager again and the new Man needs another type of players then we might end up with a patchwork squad like Man Utd after SAF->Moyes->LvG->Mou with the exception that we will not buy ourselves out of the situation like they attempt to.

Absolutely. Even Szczesny to some degree. Gone on to pastures new and he’s great

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One thing I’ll give Jens though at his best he was legitimately one of the best keepers in Europe. His 05-06 seasons in the CL was amazing. Never forget Villarreal penalty save or his Solskjaer save in them FA cup final in 2005.

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Oooh I don’t remember this save? Or do you mean the save he made in the 06/07 season at OT after Adebayor had just scored? Solskjaer actually mouthed “how the f*** did he just save that?”

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Emery is use to totally analysing opposition teams before playing them and organising his team to counter there play. Unfortunately for him he’s now in the prem where any team playing spontaneous attacking football will ruin his analysis. It’s going to be a long painful season for him and us unless he recognises this.

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Could be that game then mate, actually I think you’re completely right. That’s the exact save it was

That’s a good post and I agree with all of it except for Emery being given the job as a short term measure before getting a better manager in.

I think the board had plenty of time to sort out any manager they wanted but they were never going to go for a manager that wanted assurances about spending and player recruitment.
They went for a manager that wasn’t going to be too demanding and that would toe the line with the board and with Emery they got just that.

He is experienced at the top level, if not that successful, and was available, and he was certainly not on the top of many supporters list of Wenger replacements.
But he is here, and even if we finish outside the top six and win nothing, I think he will see out his contract, which the board will be quite happy with.

Kroenke, and whoever made the decision to sign Emery, have made their ambitions quite clear.
They aren’t going to spend big and as long as supporters keep paying, the board will be satisfied with Emery because they have a manager who suits their level of ambition, which is adequate and no more.

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Have you seen him against Man U? Juventus fans don’t believe he’s at the right level for their club. You want him to do well when he was here, but the amount of blunders he made at Arsenal and for his home country on the big stage was clear to see he wasn’t good enough. Once Juventus find someone better they will swap him out, unless he transforms himself miraculously.

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Yeah think some people don’t realise Woj improvements still don’t make him a top keeper.

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Actually the first 25-30 games of his reign he seems to have taken a bit of a different approach tho. Much more of taking initiative, having the ball and trying to dictate the play rather than countering what is presented too him.

Thing is, isn’t 4-2-3-1 meant to be his jam as a formation?

We were playing it and doing ok to an extent but the play has gotten so much worse since the switch to a back 3.

Kolasinac is our best attacker, and that just shouldn’t he happening.

I get that he doesn’t trust our defence, but adding more defenders hasn’t really worked, has it?

And then it just takes another attacker away, so compromises the team in that aspect even more.

Think he’s lost his way recently. The Tottenham game seemed to have been a false dawn with the 3 at the back, and that only really worked because Holding was there.

We miss him a lot.

But we still shouldn’t be as bad as we are. Time to ditch this experiment for now. Sick of these wing backs.

The problem is we don’t have two decent CBs to pair. Who do you play?

Sokratis and Mustafi? That’s laughable.

Maybe Sokratis and Kos but the later is just coming back from what should be a career ending injury.

Some people are really high on Dino Mavropanos but he played three games at the end of a pretty lousy season and got sent off in one of them! Not saying he can’t be the answer, but we don’t have a lot of film on the guy.

I think it’s more likely that we persist with the three at the back formation until at least the summer and then try to make some personnel changes. Kos will leave, hopefully we move Mustafi on even if it means taking a loss, we sell Chambers (probably at a loss) and hope Holding has a full preseason.

Got to give him a chance he’s earned that at least. I would like to see the Double Greek partnership to see how it is

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It’s personally the most baffling part to me tbh, after all this season was about him trying to install his system and his style on the squad, yet the insistence on this formation and tactics that (to my knowledge) that he has never used that has appeared sporadically suggests he’s not even sure himself either. If the defensive performances improved I could forgive it, but the same manager who earlier in the season who was making shrewd and smart management decisions swapped to a formation which in turn also gave up the midfield by playing Xhaka as a CB. This compromise hasn’t solved anything.

Sometimes its like I’m watching a completely different manager from one at the start of season. Can injuries really of changed that much?

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I’d like to see a 4-1-3-2 formation with Elneny sweeping in front of the back 4. He could also drop into the back 4 when one of the backs goes forward in attack.

Exactly.

People saying we should let him impose his philosophy and see where it takes us.

Well this ain’t his philosophy, this ain’t anyone’s philosophy.

@Joshua None of the partnerships are ideal, but we were playing Sokratis and Mustafi for part of that unbeaten run.

Do you really think adding Lichtsteiner or Koscielny to that pairing is truly helping our defence in any way?

It’s horrible cowardly weak shit.

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If. :arteta:

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Never know he might have a barnstormer of a season and we get VVD prices or we decide to keep him because he is our new VVD :henry2:

It is nice to dream.

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