Arsenal: Unai Emery is not the enemy you’re looking for

Arsenal fans are desperate for someone to blame, but Unai Emery is not the enemy that you’re looking for. He did everything right on his part.

Honestly, I’m not going to say too much about any Arsenal fan wanting to pin that loss to Chelsea on just about anyone. It was a complete team failing. But I will stand up and say that you have to be nuts to take it out on Unai Emery.

Emery’s first year at the club has been tumultuous, to say the least, with a 22-match unbeaten streak mixed in with a glorious missed opportunity to get into the top four, capped off by an utter failing in another, last-ditch, one-off attempt to get into the Champions League via the Europa League.

No doubt the manager calls the shots, but to say that Emery is responsible for this one is way off base, and I’ll tell you why.

For starters, this mindset, this epidemic of looking limp and feeble, that didn’t start with Emery. To ask him to turn all of the failings of the last era around in one year is like asking a soft-shelled crab to solve the global warming crisis.

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But more importantly, I’d like to ask what those of you who blame Emery would have rather done? The big, huge, everything parameter that we could have wanted out of him in this match is for him to start his best players in their best positions.

He did that.

The remarkable thing about this match is that it was his best players in his best positions that let him down. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang? Worthless. Alexandre Lacazette? Misfired. Laurent Koscielny? Sleep walking.

Those are the three guys that I think we all had the most faith in, and those were three of our worst guys on the day.

So who picks up that slack, Mesut Ozil? That’s cute.

Emery put faith in his players to get the job done. He gave them their best opportunity to do so and when he needed them most, his best guys failed miserably. And just when you thought they were at their peak, with Aubameyang scoring in four straight, Lacazette taking player of the season, Koscielny always unflappable.

It wasn’t to be. And it was shocking how badly it wasn’t to be, but blaming Emery is short-sighted. He gave his team everything we could have asked for and they failed.