Arsenal: Why would we give Unai Emery a chance?
By Marc Gibbons
Arsenal suffered yet again away from home under the eye of Unai Emery, so why are people still calling out for fans to give him a chance?
Yet again another abject, clueless Arsenal display away from home and it’s got to the point now where I’m fully onboard the Unai Emery out train and I want to know why people are still wanting to give him a chance?
Yes I’m full of emotion whilst I write this, but I think after losing another 90 minutes of my life to mind numbingly boring football I’m fully entitled to be. Unai Emery has got neither the tactical nous nor the mindset to be a manager of a top four Premier League team. At best he could manage a team in the bottom half. Someone like Southampton or Watford.
His team selections and decision-making just get more and more baffling by the week, and the football is just getting worse and worse. When you used to mention the name Arsenal you thought of Wengers free-flowing, fast attacking football.
Now what you get is players running around like headless chickens and it’s taking us 45 minutes to get a shot on target against a team who were in the championship last season. Seriously, the football now is worse than what it was when we played under George Graham, the good old 1-0 to the Arsenal days. The football was bad then but at least it got results.
I seriously cannot see where a goal is going to come from if Lacazette and Aubameyang have a bad game. Pepe just looks like a deer in headlights in front of goal and the other attackers look like they will score less than ten goals between them.
I want to question the decision-making from Emery as well, he was weary of the physical threat that Sheffield United would pose, so why didn’t he start Lucas Torreira in the middle, who is a player who loves physicality? Instead what we got was the same midfield two of Xhaka and Guendouzi. The decision to start Willock was also wrong and I need to ask—if Kieran Tierney was fit, why wasn’t he starting? It would have been a huge test for him and I would have liked to have seen what he offered with his crossing ability against the Sheffield United defence.
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Amongst all the bad decisions and bad football, people are saying we are being too harsh on Unai Emery, and he should be given a chance. I want to know why he deserves a chance. We tolerated Arsene Wenger and allowed him a chance to improve things out of sheer respect for the man and what he achieved earlier in his career at the club.
What has Unai Emery done to deserve this?
Last season he finished one place higher and took us one step further in the Europa League than Wenger did in the previous season. Some people thought of it as improvement but it wasn’t really.
Still, we tolerated it because of the mess of the club. This season I was expecting to see improvement but there has been zero. Instead we get piss poor excuses after a poor game about how we need to learn, but the fact of the matter is we are not. The defence still isn’t great, the midfield is still static and it’s still the same players bailing us out and with the amount of investment that was put into the team in the summer there can be no more excuses. Yes, we have scraped the top four this season but that is purely down to other teams making slow starts.
Raul Sanllhei said recently that he isn’t afraid to sack Unai Emery and for me he has to put his money where his mouth is, surely he must be watching these games and thinking, “What is Unai Emery bringing to this team? We don’t even compete in most games.”
I would like to hear a valid argument from someone who thinks Emery is moving the club in the right direction. At this point I would happily bring Arsene Wenger back to the club just so I have a chance of seeing good football in the Premier League again.
At the beginning of the season I was willing to give Unai Emery until the new year to prove himself but at this point the new year seems an age away and I just can’t see why he should be given a chance to prove himself beyond that.