Arsenal: Two positives and two negatives from season so far

Negative 1: Unai Emery

Of course it was going to be Unai Emery. The man who nearly single-handedly killed supporters’ love for football and Arsenal. So bad was his style of football, the team is still trying to improve things on the pitch four months after he left. Perhaps what was most frustrating was the lack of hope for change.

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The matches became predictable. Gone were the days of our fast free-flowing ‘Wenger ball’ and instead we had slow, ponderous tedious ‘Emery ball’. There would be a brief, impassioned period in which the players would find energy and intensity from somewhere, but it would never last. The performances were unsustainable, and eventually the results would follow suit.

It was obvious to most people that Emery should have been let go much earlier in the season than he was — some even called for his sacking at the end of last season, though that would have been a tad harsh.

But the club hesitated and let things slide. When they finally did pull the trigger, days before the busiest stretch of the season through the winter months, it was too late. Arsenal are in their current state because they dragged the Emery fiasco on and on. Emery was the wrong hire, clearly, but the club only compounded the issue with their needless patience.