Arsenal: Unai Emery’s experiment won’t end this summer

Arsenal saw a lot of experimentation over the course of this year, but that doesn’t mean that everything has been solved. Unai Emery has a lot yet to figure out.

We talked a lot this year about patience, and about letting Unai Emery figure things out here at Arsenal. He needed to understand better what the club had in terms of resources and ability and from there, we could start to make improvements.

It makes this summer the most important in quite some time. With eyes on at least four major positions and a lot of exits, Emery is going to use the knowledge acquired this summer to decide who stays and who he can cut loose in favor of more useful options.

But even with all of that on the to-do list, we still can’t expect everything to be answered after this summer transfer window.

I know, we’re all impatient. We want to get back into the highest company in the Premier League, but Emery has had one year in the shadow of Wenger’s 22.

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In that one year, a lot has come to light, and Emery’s ruthlessness is the perfect mindset to cut the club apart, necessarily, and give us the pieces we need to start moving forward, but we still have a lot of experimentation left to go. Let Denis Suarez be an example – just because you sign someone doesn’t mean that they are the answer to the question you brought them in to solve.

Not just that, but he doesn’t have the same knowledge of a lot of these youth players like Wenger did. Remember, all these youth guys are Wenger’s guys too, and Emery has been trying to figure them and their uses out this year just as much as his senior players.

He’s spoken up about the need to play more young players, and that involves a lot of trial and error, letting youngsters have senior starts and hoping that they can stick at the senior level. But if they don’t, that more of the experiment. More of the figuring out what’s working and what’s not.

All I’m saying is that next year should indeed look a bit more put together, but it probably won’t be the perfect transition yet.

Seriously, that’s okay. This is going to take time. We’re seeing a lot of progress and a lot of reason to be optimistic. That’s something worth waiting for.