Long way to go in the season, mind you. A top 4 finish makes him a contender. I think Dyche wins it if he keeps Everton up.
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That and he’s been able to build villa up from pretty a mediocre position and expectation.
Let’s be real they are still over performing but he’s working wonders and they are probably the most exciting team in the league this year. Smashing goals in for fun.
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The abuse he got on this forum was crazy. Always liked him and wish him well.
Remember people saying he had a small dick and called him Bumery. Dark times of OA.
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The abuse was over the top but the criticism was well deserved at that point. The end of his first season was bad enough but the start of the second you could just see it was only ending one way.
He was never (and probably still isn’t) a manager for a top team.
He was terrible here and a hiring that was from corrupt Sanllehi.
I will not have Emery revisionism here for the love of god.
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Always remember, what we were under Emery
31 fucking shots
This is where Watford ended up that season
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The defeat at Leicester away the season he got sacked still gives me nightmares. Chambers, Holding and Luiz at the back. Fuck me.
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Just pulled up the ‘highlights’ on YouTube. Wish I bloody hadn’t. It’s like PTSD watching games from that season.
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Full accounting:
I like Emery and think he is a very good manager, but I get frustrated seeing people like Tony Adams talk rubbish about how we might have won the league last season if Emery managed us and not Arteta. For a start, Emery bottled top four, so you’re gonna have to actually put some work into convincing me that he couldn’t have bottled the title too, and even more work to prove that he could have got Arsenal into that position in the first place.
Emery’s sacking was totally justified. Doesn’t mean he isn’t a fantastic manager, sometimes managers find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Despite how well Villa are doing, and he is doing an incredibly good job there, I don’t for a second wish we had him instead of Arteta.
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Our team was diabolically shit and we continued looking shit for a good 2 years under Arteta.
Emery was mostly a victim of circumstance where Arsenal fans and the media expected us to be getting into the CL and we had a squad which in rapid decline and mid table level. It was also too soon for us all to accept being told this was a process and we are at stage 1 of 5 so buckle up and be prepared for a two year transition period where we slowly replace a decade of deadwood.
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Well Emery got the job on the basis of working with the current squad so he helped set his own expectations there.
Said all along we needed gutting from the inside out, Wenger had to go cos he built it, Emery was a plaster, Arteta came in when everyone finally accepted it wasn’t an immediate turnaround.
Still took some time to clear the shit but he started swinging pretty early on (first Ozil, then Auba) and his ‘non-negotiables’.
You don’t sign a 3 time EL winner to start a project, seemed there was almost blind faith that anyone but Wenger could do better.
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Arteta had to work with the same squad and immediately got them to be more resistant to opposition attacks. Emery had a shit squad but he was getting massacred on the pitch, which is unacceptable for a midtable club, let alone Arsenal regardless of squad quality.
Emery also had the benefit of 3 transfer windows to fix things.
Good to see I was still using the f-word so freely
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Emery has improved and seemingly evolved as coach (credit to him) there’s nothing more to it than that
He was ultimately terrible here, some of the revisionism is just utter BS
Real easy to be Nostradamus after the fact
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When you look at what happened to United after Ferguson left them (especially since he left them in a very strong position) and then look at Emery’s tenure at Arsenal, I actually think he did reasonably well in his only full season.
Teams moving on from long term managers often take a bit of a dive, and ours was at least not out of control. It was always likely our first manager after Wenger would be somewhat transitional.
If we’d gone straight from Wenger to Arteta I don’t think Arteta would still be in charge now and I don’t think it would have worked.
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I think the Emery stop gap needed to happen to pave way for the position we were in. If we stuck with him, I genuinely don’t think we’d be in the position we are today.
Hard to say of course, we don’t truly know what would’ve happened - but we just kept losing and the manner of how the games went was the start of his downfall.
He lost the dressing room completely, the players didn’t care. They used to take the piss out of his English (despite them not being very good at it themselves). Egos everywhere.
The connection with the fanbase was also distraught. His position was untenable as there was too much to fix, too soon.
Man Utd and Spurs have multiple failed projects over a 10-yr window cause they just keep focusing on bringing in illustrious names. They’ve both had some great managers there, all failed miserably.
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I don’t think he left them in a strong position at all. The team was in need of a complete overhaul (mostly old and past it) and Fergie eeked out the last drops of qualuty before riding off into the sunset.
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He was the wrong guy at the wrong time. Ivan opted for someone who was a EL specialist to try to brute force the club back into the CL via the Europa League. Throw in Raul being a criminal, players falling off a cliff in terms of form, and it was never going to work. I do wonder sometimes if things had worked out differently in terms of transfers if he would have been better off. Does Arsenal with Zaha, Perisic and Banega grind its way into Champions League places in 18/19?
Manager had to take certain responsibilities, but you know our squad at that time.
They just gave up.