But then as a back up, he must be able to step up once the first choice has gone. That’s the whole point. Jenkinson becomes the first choice. Instead, Bellerin ended up displacing Debuchy. Jenks wasn’t even in contention.
You sound like you’re in a very small minority if you think Jenkinson has exceeded expectations since he’s been here.
I had zero expectations and he exceeded them.
Seeiously doubt I’m the only one.
The fact we are talking about players like Jenkinson, Mustafi, Chambers, Holding, Sokratis, Kos etc, getting anywhere near the first team, shows how much our standards have dropped.
Not one of our defenders would get in any of the other top clubs and to make it worse it would seem as if they aren’t even organised into a defensive unit so it’s hardly a surprise that we are letting in goals so frequently from defensive errors.
Emery must be able to see this and still it keeps happening so after the next window, when he can get rid of the dross and get some of his own players in, we should see things get better.
If they don’t, then we will know he isn’t the right man for the job.
Emery and the board are playing Russian roulette by not getting anything in now. It could get very ugly and make us look a very bad choice for potential targets.
Very least we need a couple of loans or good enough for now. Summer is to far away and the other teams will strengthen anyway.
I agree but our defence needs a complete overhaul in personnel and coaching.
So to do all that in this window isn’t going to happen.
It’s true that if we have a poor finish to an already underwhelming season, then any potential targets could be put off.
It could also see some of the few decent quality players we have, want to move elsewhere as well.
This is what bothers me.
In the next window, we will have to spend more than 100m as a minimum to sort out our defence to get us back to being competent, while all the other clubs, apart from spurs, are going to spend more than us to pull even further ahead.
The defensive midfielders were pushing way too far forward.
Emery seems to be happy to continue the trend from yesteryear of overloading and committing everyone forward.
Pressing and tracking back alone just isn’t enough. He’s really failing to organise this team, and that doesn’t take seasons.
Which he hasn’t even had yet.
Let him get some players in that cater hos philosophy before we knock it 
Yeah even as an Emery backer have to concede there is something in this tbh.
There isn’t a legit manager on planet who would have done differently… there are plenty of reasons to criticize Emery over this season, but this isn’t one of them. The defense this year is a tragic combination of insufficient quality combined with absolutely terrible, terrible injury luck.
I would agree we should see more consistent improvement in some of those things, but I would also say we have seen these qualities more often than previous years. Our pressing against Chelsea for example was absolutely WC for an Arsenal team.
The combination right now of insufficient quality and massive injury crisis at back is killing us.
The only time we had something resembling defensive stability in terms of personnel was during our unbeaten run, then Holding got injured while Koscielny just returned (and probably wasn’t even close to fit) and had to slot in right away. Bellerin (who was playing during the very same run) returned and looked by far our best fullback in terms of quality and is gone for the rest of reason, Kosc-Sokratis looked very good against Chelsea, next match we lose both of them.
There are things Emery could be doing better but’s it mighty difficult to build cohesion if your going to keep losing players on the scale we have. I just hope he realised that players like Mustafi need to be binned asap and replaced with someone even better than Sokratis or Kosc to raise the quality of the defense.
That’s why for me summer is important, particularly from that standpoint of how he has assessed our squad, it should tell us a lot going forward.
Did you read the comment Lukaku made about them knowing that Arsenal leaves a lot of space behind the full backs when they are pushing forward and they exploited exactly that?
Well we have games where we are all over the place, just like last year… I think people are expecting way too much change after just a half season when you consider the lack of intelligence of so many of our players and the bizarro injury crisis… if you look at the timing of Holding injury and the sequence of events after that, it is certainly showing correlation, even if not total causation.
Boy has Unai got his work cut out .
The defence is fucking abysmal.
Get it sorted FFS !
Honestly I remember Everton and Watford a lot earlier in the season, games we won btw, exploiting the same area’s of space we left. I think one of the reasons Emery went 3-4-3 might have been to solve that. At least that is speaking to his benefit, he tries something, but I do find it worrying that after half a season there are some fundamental problems.
Yeah I wasn’t saying we had solved the problem, more that we at least saw glimmers of more functional pressing and organization at times… we are still mostly a shambles, which is concerning, but at least there have been games where our tactical organization was a class above last year.
I really think it is super hard to judge too much right now… .like I said, our worst wobble occurred after Holding went down and then we have had snowball of injuries. Two probable starting defenders out for essentially 6 months is brutal… layer on top of that Koss is aging and has duct tape holding his achilles together… and then Micki, Welbeck with long-term injuries as well… maybe not key players, but squad players that put more pressure on overall squad and lower total quality.
Crazy how much the Rob Holding injury has impacted our season 
Has it though? Because we were still leaking goals even with Holding and couldn’t keep a clean sheet for shit.
Unbeaten so obviously means better 
Honestly, I think it was the start of our poor form at least. Whose to say, if we hadn’t endured all these defensive injuries, Emery could be bedding in a solid CB foundation right now and we’d be better off?
He has to deal with it a shit squad and many injuries to key players. Doubt he can do better, tbh. The next summer is gonna be massive to see if he is the right man for the job.