Arsenal FC: Out of control

Aug 16, 2011
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The Emery situation is I think more dire than it's being played out to be.

He allowed the players to vote on the captaincy, and it's really blown up this week as we can see.

His team selection is consistently horrendous, his tactics are just as bad and there is no gameplan, nor does the club really have an identity - aside from being viewed as a basket case.

The Ozil situation has been handled incredibly poorly too.

The sooner he is gone, the better, I think.
 

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Timely bump.

Agree. The overall Arsenal situation is worse than when Wenger was in charge. Agonisingly bad, it is.

I ******* hate our board. From Pornstein:

The appointment of Unai Emery as Arsenal head coach was supposed to herald a new dawn for a club plagued by regression and rancour towards the end of Arsene Wenger’s time in charge.

But 17 months on, it seems Emery finds himself in a similar position to Wenger, only without the 22-year background that made the Frenchman’s departure such a difficult decision.

Speculation over Emery’s future ratcheted up after his side let slip a two-goal lead to draw 2-2 at home to Crystal Palace on Sunday, but internally the Spaniard is safe for now.

As is normal after most games at the Emirates Stadium, Arsenal’s head of football Raul Sanllehi and technical director Edu entered the dressing room to speak with players and staff. Director Josh Kroenke was over from America and, as is customary on such visits, he went to see Emery in his office. The conversation is said to have been routine; business as usual.

Anger within the corridors of power was directed not towards the 47-year-old, rather the VAR system that granted Palace a route back into the contest and later denied Arsenal a winning goal.
The subject will be aggressively raised by the Gunners at Monday’s directors of football meeting, which takes place inside the Premier League’s London offices at 10am GMT.

Chaired by the Premier League’s own director of football Richard Garlick, these gatherings take place two or three times a year and provide a chance to talk about a whole range of topics, including fixture schedules and youth development, but this one is likely to be dominated by VAR.

Arsenal’s hierarchy are seething about the decisions and believe the anger of their supporters would have been channelled in the same direction were it not for the fall-out from captain Granit Xhaka’s behaviour as he was substituted off, which the club admit was unjustifiable.

Emery still has firm support from those above him, although there is now an acceptance that after a year and a half in the job and with the benefit of significant backing in the transfer market last summer, there is not much more the club can do and the onus is on him to deliver.

They do not believe in knee-jerk reactions and will give Emery time, most probably until the end of the season, before deciding if he will be allowed to go into the final year of his contract.

There was a desire within a section of Arsenal’s top brass to reward him with a new deal last summer, but this was not a universal wish and the majority verdict held sway.

It is also fair to say that Emery does not retain the backing of his entire squad — the main concern of some members being an apparent absence of team identity and clarity on what is being asked of them — but equally the majority of players and staff are believed to be behind him.

There is even sympathy for him within certain quarters, given the amount of on and off-field change, as well as various political and personal issues, with which he has had to contend.

Emery was the unanimous choice to succeed Wenger after a thorough recruitment process that saw a long list of candidates whittled down to a final eight, all of whom were interviewed.

The identities of the other seven have never previously been made public, but The Athletic can exclusively reveal they were, in alphabetical order: Massimiliano Allegri, Mikel Arteta, Thierry Henry, Julen Lopetegui, Ralf Rangnick, Jorge Sampaoli and Patrick Vieira.

Arsenal additionally discussed Antonio Conte, Eddie Howe, Maurizio Sarri and Brendan Rodgers — but for differing reasons they were not pursued, while Luis Enrique was never an option.

The only contender who came close to Emery was Arteta, but ultimately his lack of managerial experience and a readily available backroom team worked against the former Gunners captain.

It is unclear what contingency plans are in place if Arsenal decide to part with Emery — although there is a sense that assistant first-team coach Freddie Ljungberg would be capable of at least assuming a caretaker role — but currently that is not an active consideration.

We chose Emery out of those eight. Three of those would have been FAR superior appointments, but we went with this absolute joker. And it's not as if his faults were unforeseen considering his previous positions:



David Cartlidge on Twitter   Let’s talk about Emery    .png
 

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I still don't think Arteta was the answer either tbh.

There is no guarantee he would have us in any better position than we are now, however, we will never know.

Will be interested who is on the shortlist when the job comes up again.
Our squad is 25% better than an increasingly senile Wenger's last year or so, and statistically speaking Unai is putting up L's in comparison.

Arteta is a notoriously proficient footballing mind and is not only the best in the world's #2, but was mentored in a similar capacity by Arsene while he was still playing.

You can't be certain, but I'd comfortably put my life savings on Arteta having us in a more promising position right now if he had been given the nod.

The most worrying concern for me with our board/its judgement is that UE was reportedly, by far, a unanimous favourite. What the actual *?



Listen to the dickhead speak.



Not at all surprising. *, I may be exaggerating a lot here, but even Thierry would've been a better appointment.
 
Sep 28, 2011
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Our squad is 25% better than an increasingly senile Wenger's last year or so, and statistically speaking Unai is putting up L's in comparison.

Arteta is a notoriously proficient footballing mind and is not only the best in the world's #2, but was mentored in a similar capacity by Arsene while he was still playing.

You can't be certain, but I'd comfortably put my life savings on Arteta having us in a more promising position right now if he had been given the nod.

The most worrying concern for me with our board/its judgement is that UE was reportedly, by far, a unanimous favourite. What the actual fu**?



Listen to the dickhead speak.



Not at all surprising. fu**, I may be exaggerating a lot here, but even Thierry would've been a better appointment.

Yeah agree, the worry is how UE was the overwhelming favorite at the time, though looking at the reported list that we were looking at wasn't overly inspiring. Out of that leaked list, I would have probably gone Allegri, who may have played the dull football like we are at the moment, but would have hopefully put results on the board, which I can cop.

It was a Gazidis list though, so hopefully with him out of the picture that lists to replace Emery looks more inspiring.

Also, can understand the public support from the board makes sense, can't be expected to come out and slate the current manager.
 

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Henry is a s**t manager, I don't think he'd have got us to the EL final.
He wasn't even a good captain in my opinion. But as a manager, he can't be categorically judged just from one tenure, even if it was abysmal.

UE last year started off pretty well, remember?

20ish games we went unbeaten in all competitions. After April, if I recall, we just fell into a heap and have enjoyed few inspiring moments since.
 
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I still don't think Arteta was the answer either tbh.

There is no guarantee he would have us in any better position than we are now, however, we will never know.

Will be interested who is on the shortlist when the job comes up again.

But I'm tipping he wouldn't have us in a worse position than we're in now.
 

glenferry23

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Timely bump.

Agree. The overall Arsenal situation is worse than when Wenger was in charge. Agonisingly bad, it is.

I ******* hate our board. From Pornstein:



We chose Emery out of those eight. Three of those would have been FAR superior appointments, but we went with this absolute joker. And it's not as if his faults were unforeseen considering his previous positions:



View attachment 772020


Interesting that Ornstein mentions Arsenal has a clause to activate a third year for Emery or not. That’s promising, should he make it that far.
 

Shoei

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The identities of the other seven have never previously been made public, but The Athletic can exclusively reveal they were, in alphabetical order: Massimiliano Allegri, Mikel Arteta, Thierry Henry, Julen Lopetegui, Ralf Rangnick, Jorge Sampaoli and Patrick Vieira.

Arsenal additionally discussed Antonio Conte, Eddie Howe, Maurizio Sarri and Brendan Rodgers — but for differing reasons they were not pursued, while Luis Enrique was never an option.

Henry - literally no experience and was exposed at Monaco
Arteta - literally no experience
Lopetegui - Sacked 16 games into coaching Ez-mode Madrid with a 6W 2D 6L record.....didn’t impress with Spain either
Rangnick - Doesn't even manage anymore?
Sampaoli - Eh...
Allegri - why the * would he leave Juventus to come to Arsenal? He’ll wait around to take a bigger job e.g PSG/United/Bayern/Madrid

Vieira - Very little experience. Who cares about his time in the US. Needs to prove himself.

Conte - won at Chelsea then imploded....didnt seem at all happy in England so why would he come to Arsenal?

Sarri -struggles at Chelsea then bailed ASAP

Howe - Maybe? I mean it’s big step up from Bournemouth and Burnley to Arsenal in terms of expectation.

Rodgers - Didn’t rate him at Liverpool. Yeah yeah Liverpool finished second but how much of that was on the back of Suarez going godmode for two seasons. Suarez leaves and Rogers is sacked two seasons later. Going to Scotland to manage Celtic in the Premier league is the easiest job in European football so that counts for * all.

But maybe I was wrong, Leicester are playing great under him. I’d give it to the end of the season and see if the foxes are still in the 6 but maybe he could be due a redemption shot with Arsenal...

Luis Enrique - someone I wanted With his daughters poor health he wouldn’t have stayed at the club long anyway. Now with her death who knows if he’ll ever come back to coaching.

None of the managers listed anyone can make a real arguement that they would have been massively better than Emery.
 
The Emery situation is I think more dire than it's being played out to be.

He allowed the players to vote on the captaincy, and it's really blown up this week as we can see.

His team selection is consistently horrendous, his tactics are just as bad and there is no gameplan, nor does the club really have an identity - aside from being viewed as a basket case.
This feels so much like Port Adelaide. We hate our admin, we hate our captain(s), we think our coach is a clown.
 
Aug 16, 2011
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He wasn't even a good captain in my opinion. But as a manager, he can't be categorically judged just from one tenure, even if it was abysmal.

UE last year started off pretty well, remember?

20ish games we went unbeaten in all competitions. After April, if I recall, we just fell into a heap and have enjoyed few inspiring moments since.
Yeah fair point, we lost to City and Chelsea MD1 & 2 (expected), but he did get a nice run going.

Our away form though has been abysmal for the most part. April onwards we were woeful.

---

Jose is linked with the job if UE gets the flick. I'd take him. If he could finish second with that disaster of a Man United team, he would be able to do much better with our squad.
 

Shoei

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Zizou had literally no senior experience when he took over at Real Madrid.

For every 1 that makes it there are dozens that don’t.

and let’s not pretend Zidane inheriting a team that had finished 2nd In the league and won the Champions League 2 seasons before is in anyway comparable to the task the Manager at Arsenal faces.
 

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For me, Guardiola choosing & keeping him as his understudy says a lot, shortening those odds to a third or less.

With Madrid, their perennial expectation is to win the league and make the last 4 of the Champions League every season. With Arsenal, the board would be content with top 4 finishes and knockout Champions League appearances, with a dash of domestic cup runs here and there.

Real have the resources to accomplish their tasks, as do we ours. Similarly difficult considering position, each club’s managerial demands are; just differing echelons in my opinion.
 
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