Arsenal: Unai Emery baby steps are better than stagnation

Arsenal fans are deservedly questioning Unai Emery’s abilities to lead this team, but short-term, at least his baby steps are still making forward progress.

Arsenal were up 2-0 at the ten minute mark in front of a roaring Emirates. Finally, Unai Emery had gotten it right. he’d started Kieran Tierney, he’d restored Alexandre Lacazette to the starting XI and we were going to cruise to a home victory and keep pace with the top four.

And then everything went wrong. The Gunners gave a goal back on a penalty and lost it in the second half from more piss-poor defending. Nothing changed. A single point at home against Crystal Palace after losing 1-0 away at Sheffield United and it looks like all those points we were clawing at in the early going aren’t landing anymore.

Throughout those “clawed points”, fans could at least look forward to the improvements coming to the squad when players started getting healthy.

Which is why it was so bewildering when, post-international break, Unai Emery still somehow saw his best defensive lineup including David Luiz, Sokratis and Sead Kolasinac.

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And when he continued to deploy a much better defense in midweek matches, I nearly gave up all hope that Emery was ever going to figure it out. Or maybe he had, but he was obstinately sticking to his guns to prove a point or something. Whatever the case, it was hurting the team and we desperately needed to see improvement.

Kieran Tierney was one small piece of that needed improvement. Starting over Kolasinac, Tierney was finally given a chance to replicate his midweek successes on the stage we bought him to be on. It was a baby step towards what we needed.

It wasn’t enough. Because baby steps rarely are.

But a baby step is still a baby step. Meaning it’s movement. Forward. And in a world where we have very little to be grateful for and very little to appreciate, at least we made the small step of getting Tierney where he belongs. It doesn’t speak well for the long run. It shows such an unwillingness to make changes from Unai Emery. But it also means that maybe as things continue to get worse, he will be smart enough to make the smallest improvements.

Which, in the grand scheme, is all we have to look forward to. But that’s better than nothing, so let’s take it for what it’s worth.