OFFICIAL : Unai Emery signs for Arsenal

Emery does all his own video analysis and, during his time at Valencia, gave players USB sticks to watch tactical clips on. He suspected one player never watched them, so gave him a blank USB and then asked him what he’d make of the clips #afc

— Adam Summerton (@adamsummerton) May 21, 2018

what a man ffs

The Demon of Carthage wrote:

Unique wrote:

The Demon of Carthage wrote:
Why? What's keeping you from challenging for the league and the CL? I agree that you can't really compete with City and United financially, but a smart coach can get you a long way without spending much. Look at Klopp with Liverpool, he started slow and now he's already a CL finalist and has a pretty good chance of becoming a European champion

You need someone like that. You don't have to win every year, but you need a coach who can take you far into the competition and make you feel relevant again.

Emery is a coach with a weak personality. He might be able to give you a top four finish, but is that really enough? Really, what's the point of finishing top four and trophyless?What's the point of qualifying every single year for the CL without winning it once?

what do you mean he has a weak personality. i can understand a player with a weak personality but how can a manager have a weak personality.

Like for instance blowing a 4-0 lead or leaving out Di Maria and Silva because you were doing your best Guardiola impression with nonsensical decisions.

Emery is perfect for a pressure-less club. He thrives as an underdog, but at the helm of a big team, he crumbles to the pressure.

show me one manager in history that has never made the same kind of mistakes.

Uninspired and boring choice. Midcarder of midcarder, slightly better choice than Montella.

M99 wrote:Uninspired and boring choice. Midcarder of midcarder, slightly better choice than Montella.

gattuso

Can't believe I'm agreeing with Unique.

Top posts mate.

Not a bad choice imo, but a very safe one, like Emery as a manager.

Arsenal could do worse. Could probably do better too

I doubt there was anyone better than Emery in the market right now who is realistically available?

CBarca wrote:Not a bad choice imo, but a very safe one, like Emery as a manager.

Arsenal could do worse. Could probably do better too

Could they, though? Who?

Could have gone for Pellegrini, Ancelotti, Sarri is leaving Napoli, Conte is leaving Chelsea, Lowe is probably leaving Germany (I think), Benitez probably could have been persuaded from Newcastle, Jardim, Enrique and Allegri I suppose were too expensive? (but probably more worth it than Emery).

Probably more, those were just off the top of my head.

vanDEEZ wrote:Could have gone for Pellegrini, Ancelotti, Sarri is leaving Napoli, Conte is leaving Chelsea, Lowe is probably leaving Germany (I think), Benitez probably could have been persuaded from Newcastle, Jardim, Enrique and Allegri I suppose were too expensive? (but probably more worth it than Emery).

Probably more, those were just off the top of my head.

I don't disagree, but Emery does seem to represent a lot of the things Arsenal were publicly looking for - youngish, capable of playing good technical attacking football, brings through young players. Plus he has a lot of experience getting teams to perform well with limited resources and if you believe the talk, he's happy to work within the club structure. (Maybe that's a bad thing in itself, but you can't fault the club for wanting that.)

Some of those other managers might be better choices in absolute terms, but you can see why Arsenal hierarchy might have held off on them.

Hapless_Hans wrote:

S wrote:Tuchel 0 trophies in 11 years. ufff

Guy has nothing to show for except for cocksucking Barca and Pep on national television

0 Trophies?

Tuchel won the German Cup in the 2 years he coached Dortmund you numpty

Before he coached Mainz, hardly the place to fill a trophy cabinet.

In between he had two sabbatical years.

Stop copying stupid stuff from other stupid posts without checking

ffs dat burn

Still Emery is a good choice if not, better choice than Tuchel IMO. Time will tell

He's an average appointment. I don't see him making Arsenal challenge for the PL or anything like that, but I think he's good enough to have them compete for the top 4.

He'll bring defensive organization and intensity, something Arsenal desperately needs. It'll be interesting to see if he has Ramsey playing a role similar to the one Rakitic played back in 2014.

I genuinely think that were Emery coming straight from Sevilla, there'd be a lot more excitement about this appointment. The PSG appointment exposed a lot of his flaws to the wider world, the biggest being his lack of authority over the squad. But the more I read about his time there, the more sympathetic I am about his situation. PSG wasn't an easy job and I think plenty of good coaches would have "failed" there, given the level of player power and executive control. He wasn't the right man for that job (they need a cult of personality who can command the respect of the squad and board, but that's neither here nor there).

Arsenal will be a very different job. Yes of course there are high expectations but nobody is expecting a league title straight away nor a deep run in the Champions League. We're a sixth placed team in urgent need of repair, not a big power looking to dominate. We're not a club who will spend £300m on two forwards just because we can. It'll be closer to the environment he thrived in at Sevilla than it will be at PSG.

It sounds like he's going to have a two year contract with the option of a third. So two years to get the club back into the Champions League again, which is reasonable. After that, we can reassess where we are, what we need and who's available to take us to a higher level.

Casciavit wrote:He'll bring defensive organization and intensity, something Arsenal desperately needs. It'll be interesting to see if he has Ramsey playing a role similar to the one Rakitic played back in 2014.

This'll depend on if Ramsey is even still at the club. His contract expires in 2019 and renewal talks haven't been going well, so there's a decent chance he'll be sold to raise funds. It doesn't seem like the club are as desperate to keep him as they were with Ozil.

In any case, assuming he'll use his preferred 4-2-3-1 I can't see anyone other than Ozil as the 10. Maybe he could play RW, kind of like what Jose Reyes used to do, but then there's always the concern about his tracking back. Mkhitaryan is better suited to that role. If Ramsey stays, I think Emery would use him as a b2b CM and reign in his attacking tendencies a bit (Wenger gave him almost as much freedom as he did Ozil and Sanchez).

What he does with the midfield will be the most interesting thing to watch out for. Wenger didn't like to use holding players (both his mids were told to push up, even if one tended to hang back a little more). Emery loves them, but he won't have great options for that role waiting for him.

Demon Of Carthage wrote: Emery is perfect for a pressure-less club. He thrives as an underdog, but at the helm of a big team, he crumbles to the pressure.

Arsenal are exactly that. No manager is going to come to Arsenal and challenge for the title right off the bat unless there is significant financial backing like Man City which there isnt.

They need short term stability. Emery managed to make Sevilla fairly successful and relevant with a shoestring budget. The objective would be to get back into the Champions League. Thats the immediate goal. Anything above that is a bonus.

So, where's Simone off to???

iftikhar wrote:So, where's Simone off to???

Off to a vacation maybe

Lacazette and Auba are elite. Bellerin, Monreal and Mkhi are good enough

everyone else needs replacing, besides perhaps Cech, so it will be quite an investment needed IMO

agree it's relatively pressure free this upcoming season, goal will be to get Top 4 (can't see it, but at least apply pressure to the Top 4) and a deep EL run, possibly winning it if it's a shit year like it was for us when we won. Just gotta hope there are positives going forward in his first season and you don't stumble like we did after appointing the wrong ppl since you won't have the financial clout to keep spending until you're back in the top 4

Top 4 is definitely possible. We have no idea in what shape Chelsea will be in. The Manchester teams are fair to assume that will be there. So the competition is Liverpool and Spurs. That's not an impossible task if Arsenal do well.

on paper all of those teams are way better, but I agree it's not impossible and should be the goal, I just don't see it without a massive overhaul

absolute state of that defense and midfield

They are not MUCH better on paper, i mean Liverpool's midfield on paper is *bleep* trash.

It just seems that way because Pochettino and Klopp are much better coaches than Wenger is in 2018.

With that said i don't expect Emery to perform that much better, they obviously have flaws as a team but those flaws have been amplified by Wenger's decline.

Oxlade (gash) Keita (good) Milner (boring) Henderson (mr sideways)


Xhaka/Elneny/Wilshere/Ramsay

idk, Pool's look way better to me on paper tbh even if it's still underwhelming, both should be bringing in more midfielders though

We don't know if Keita is good yet tbh, it's a meme but until a player actually plays in the league i don't want to hype him up.

And tbh Arsenal's list aren't much different to Liverpool's tbh

People have just accepted that those players are trash because they have been playing under a declining manager who doesn't really pay attention tactically anymore.

If they weren't making such an underwhelming choice to replace him i would bet good money that a lot of players would improve.

Throw in Kalinic for the bench while you're at it

Any coach who can get Arsenal defending as a cohesive unit will instantly improve them. In fact, I'd say the biggest difference between them and Spurs/Liverpool right now is off the ball.

Of all the things that declined under Wenger, the team's defending was the biggest. For years, he set the team up in a way that left so much space behind them and gave little consideration to how to protect that space. There was no high press (it only appeared in certain games, but not every game), nor was there a commitment to getting numbers behind the ball. So on every transition Arsenal were high, open and there for the taking.

That meant that most midfielders who played for the club looked awful in defence. Xhaka's not a great defender to begin with, but leaving him back with only two defenders as cover while teams break 4v3 on them makes it so much worse. Sometimes there wouldn't even be a DM. Both full backs would go up, and both CMs would go up leaving just two CBs back there. Balls over the top and down the sides to runners were easy for the opposition. As a result, the defenders also look like garbage because they have to cover more space than they should be and can be easily dragged all over the place. That Koscielny managed to look remotely decent most of the time is one the reasons we rated him so much.

Then factor in Arsenal's declining ability to retain possession, especially under pressure (because everyone but the two centre backs has been instructed to push up the pitch and mark themselves out of the build-up phase), and you see how these issues appear so often. Can't keep the ball > Lose ball > Ball gets played in vast amounts of space.

Emery needs to focus on this the most. The attack is mostly fine with the quality that's there. Back it up with better defending and we'll be up there again.