Arsenal: Key phrase from Unai Emery announcement tells everything

When Arsenal officially announced that they were hiring Unai Emery, they called him a ‘Head Coach’. That key phrase tells us everything about the direction this club is now taking.

It’s happened. For the first time that I can remember, Arsenal have a manager not named Arsene Wenger. I was two the last time that was the case. It seems very odd. Nevertheless, here we are.

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The official announcement came on Wednesday morning. While it has been widely known since David Ornstein and others reported it on Monday night, Unai Emery is now officially the successor to Wenger. And it was quite the shock. Massimiliano Allegri, Mikel Arteta, Patrick Vieira. They were the leading candidates. But then, in the space of no more than a weekend, the club changed their mind and settled on Emery.

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What I believe is key to note in the official announcement from Arsenal is the description that they have attributed to Emery. He is not a ‘manager’, although he will undertake many of the tasks that a manager would. He is a ‘Head Coach’. That is an unquestionable and noticeable shift away from the managerial structures of the club while Wenger was still in charge.

It is not all the unexpected. In the past year, Chief Executive Ivan Gazidis, who has patiently waited for Wenger’s influence and standing to wain to make his move in the power struggle that has undoubtedly been taking place for a number of years behind the scenes at the Emirates, hired Sven Mislintat as Head of Recruitment, Raul Sanllehi as Head of Relations — which is essentially another name for a Director of Football –, and Huss Fahmy as a contracts’ expert. There was a shift to a more modern, contemporary structure. Emery is merely the completion of that.

It is unknown whether Emery was Gazidis’ first choice. The club have bullishly stated that they have hired their number one target from when the month-long process began. But given the undulating, meandering, hesitant nature of the process, it is difficult to believe the truth in such protestations.

Nevertheless, at the end of it all, Arsenal have an individual who they believe can help replace Wenger. As Gazidis stated in his press conference at the beginning of all this over a month ago, ‘you cannot replace Arsene Wenger’. His point was not that the club was now doomed with Wenger out the door. Rather, as he put it, a ‘new path’ needed to be carved out.

This is that ‘new path’, a contemporary structure in which the manager is not a manager but a head coach. It is a role that Emery is, of course, accustomed to. He was not in charge of the transfers at Paris Saint-Germain, for instance. He merely coached the team. Arsenal will adopt a similar approach.

Next: Arsenal: 3 things we learned from Unai Emery switch

Only time will tell if this is the right way to move forward. There is much uncertainty, and patience, for now, is the biggest virtue that this club can show. But, one thing is clear, this is a modern club now. The age of the manager has gone; the age of the head coach is here.