Arsenal: Unai Emery has all the hard parts behind him

Arsenal undoubtedly gave Unai Emery a lot of time to get the club into the state that he wanted it to be in, but even now, he’s through the hard parts.

Arsenal needed time to recover from Arsene Wenger’s indentation on the club. 22 years of one way of doing things isn’t just turned into something else. But Unai Emery is really challenging that state of mind. Unai Emery is making it look way easier than it really is.

There were a lot of things on the Emery to-do checklist. None of them we thought would be easy, none of them we thought would be quick. In my head, I was looking at a minimum of a year before we really started seeing then positive changes, before we started seeing the best in key Wenger-era guys, before we started competing with top-tier teams.

I was wrong. We were all wrong. Think about it. In the second match of the Emery era, we almost took a point from Chelsea. We really should have taken a point from Chelsea. But that’s not the point.

The point is, Liverpool was a battle of two equals. While so many thought we would get spanked by the Anfield-dwellers, we instead played them head on and were arguably the better team on the day. At the very least, we were equals.

Boom. Competing with top-tier teams.

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And as for seeing the best of Wenger-era guys, it was Mesut Ozil who I thought would be the longest hold-out, but less than half a season along, we are seeing him turn all the corners I thought we’d never see him turn under Wenger.

His drive against Liverpool, his fight for 90 minutes, was amazing. It was just as satisfying as when he’s not magical.

And it’s not just Ozil. Players like Lacazette, Iwobi and Mustafi have all struggled at times under Wenger and they’ve all turned significant corners under Emery and there’s no reason to think they won’t continue in that positive direction.

Boom. Getting the best out of key Wenger-era players.

All of these positive changes that we’re seeing seem to be coming in fast-forward. I mean, we haven’t lost in 15 matches. I don’t care who you’re playing against, that is a big deal, and it’s all Emery and this will to win.

I keep trying to remind myself that I don’t want to get too far ahead with this excitement, but why not? This is real.