Arsenal: Unai Emery blaming everyone but the right person

Unai Emery has again criticised Arsenal, Arsene Wenger and the players, naming them responsible for his troubles at the club. He is blaming everyone but the person who should take it most, himself.

Unai Emery was meant to steady the Arsenal ship. The final two years of the Arsene Wenger tenure saw the club fall out of the top four, fail to re-qualify for the Champions League, and slip far behind their top-four rivals, including the dreaded Spurs. Emery was the man the club decided would right the wrongs.

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It was quite clear that he was not. While Emery was given a tough hand and was always facing an uphill task, he did not help himself. His tactics were muddled, his man-management was poor, his lack of English skills was increasingly detrimental, undermining the efficacy of his communication, and by the end of his tenure, even his passion and drive had seemingly come to the inevitable conclusion that it was all for nought.

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But apparently only people not in the Emery camp have come to the realisation that his coaching was a major part of the problem. This week, Emery again reiterated his belief that other factors were to blame for his failings:

"“Arsenal was a club on a downward slope for two years before I arrived. We stopped this fall and even began to rebuild the club with the Europa League final and 5th place in the league, only one point off of Tottenham despite the fact that we took just one point in our final five matches. We had Champions’ League qualification in our grasp and it went wrong in the end. But it was a good season and we had this notion of continuing to improve. But we lost our four captains: Koscielny, Cech, Ramsey and Monreal. They were personalities that we missed this season to stay on the right track. And some stars did not have a good attitude and asked for more than what they were giving back. Taking all of that into account, we needed time to succeed with our transition to a new Arsenal which is what I wanted.”"

Now, that may well be true. The club was on a downward slope before Emery arrived, he did somewhat prevent this slide and nearly got the team back into the Champions League. And he may have lost key dressing room leaders and not had the full backing from some of the players. But all these things can be true and he still be primarily at fault for the turbulent 18 months he managed the team for.

Emery was put into a difficult situation, admittedly, but his own coaching also was not up to standard. His tactics were very poor, lacking in clear definition and offensive creativity, often relying on the individual talent to bail him out of individual games. He could not properly implement a high press, while instructed his team to play out from the back without giving them a proper plan of how to do so.

Initially, his passion and drive saw the team respond to their poor performances by snatching good results. But the process was unsustainable, and even with a 22-game unbeaten run early in his first season, the signs were clear that improvements must be made for Emery’s tenure to be a successful one. In the end, his poor coaching meant that they were not.

So yes, there were other factors at play, and yes, Emery is well within his rights to highlight them. But in consistently doing so, he is missing the primary problem.