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Arsenal will have questions to be answered in the upcoming transfer markets, but this is a rookie arena for Unai Emery, and his evolution will be tested.
I like Unai Emery. We all should. The overblown concerns are foolish, as just about everyone knows, even the few that are casting their doubts, most likely. Arsenal are headed in the right direction in so many different ways and it’s all so obvious to see. Emery at the helm is the way into the future.
The only place where we have yet to see him truly flex his control is the transfer market. Now, granted, he had his first summer, which was remarkably successful, what with Leno, Sokratis, Guendouzi and Torreira all coming to the club and making a serious difference not just for the here and now, but for the future.
But that was just the tutorial portion of the career mode. The next part is going to be the hardest, because he is now getting a sense of who is right for his system, and who is tragically wrong. There will need to be sales, and cleaning of the house, but more importantly, there will need to be purchases.
And unlike most top-tier clubs, the purchases will have to be made with a budget that is somehow – and rather remarkably – always strained.
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Unai Emery came over from PSG, the richest club in the world. They can and do buy anyone that they want. Neymar was the crowning purchase, but there have been so many others and there will be so many more. That is how they stay perennially at the top. Because they have unlimited money.
Emery didn’t have those kinds of funds at Sevilla, but the expectations at Sevilla are nowhere near as high as they are at Arsenal. He has PSG-like expectations with a Sevilla-like budget here in North London, which is a tough situation to be in, and it’s a situation that will require him to evolve a bit as a manager to face a foe that he hasn’t had to before.
Thankfully, Emery looks like the kind of guy that welcomes the chance to learn, to innovate, to try something different. We see that in his tactics, so hopefully he can take that same mindset into the brutal transfer market, where he won’t be given £100m to sign Ousmane Dembele and call it a day.
He’ll have to be creative. Really, really creative. He has a great team of minds to help him do just that, though.