Arsenal: Nobody likes a whiner, but Unai Emery isn’t wrong

Unai Emery’s tenure at Arsenal was destined to fail. And while I never liked a lot of whining, there is certain credibility in what Emery has been saying.

Unai Emery has had a lot to say about his stay at Arsenal recently. And, as you can imagine, not a lot of it is positive. The Spaniard has bemoaned the circumstances that saw him given just over a year to right  wobbly ship, and while I never like a whiner, and will always beg that grown men take responsibility for their own failures… a lot of what Emery says is true.

For instances, one of his biggest griefs is that the four leaders at the club, the four captains, all left. Petr Cech, Nacho Monreal, Aaron Ramsey and Laurent Koscielny. All gone. And they all left just a year after Emery taking over.

Speaking of which, when Emery took over, the club were in a bit of a topsy-turvy state. Arsene Wenger really had locked in some players to massive contracts and financially handicapped the team. That’s all true.

So when Emery points to this stuff as symptomatic of his demise, we have to draw the distinction between what’s an excuse and what’s a valid reason.

Excuses are what you see from guys like Jose Mourinho and Maurico Pochettino all the time. “The refs weren’t on our side” or “the wind was blowing too hard.” Those are excuses. Unai Emery was never a guy to make excuses during his time with the club. He owned up to mistakes. Promised to do better. All that stuff.

What we have here is an unnecessary middle ground. Emery isn’t taking much responsibility for himself, but he is making valid points. So it sounds like he’s deflecting the blame, but he took so much of the blame when he was at the helm that I wonder if this is just him getting all the stuff off his chest that he didn’t have the chance to say when he was too busy saying “I should have done better.”

If you’re going to take over a club that’s been under the watch of the same prolific manager for 22 years, you’re going to need help. No doubt. All that help left after his first year and everyone else quit on him. That’s really tough. Part of me wants to say, “well, that’s why Arsenal chose you, to ease that transition.”

But part of me understands how impossible that situation is. And how impossible it proved to be.