Emery given every advantage is worse than Wenger at his lowest. Emery has got to go. We will waste another season under his reign because we won't fire anyone after 12 months, but he is clearly not the man for the job.
Yep. I love Ozil, and I think he was poorly utilized by Emery for almost the entire season, but since Emery isn't going anywhere this summer, we need to be rid of Ozil's wages (which will require eating a portion of them most likely) so we can go with youth.
That is near or at the top of the list of the most pathetic, deflating big-game performances I've seen us put in. And sadly I have racked up quite a few of them at Tigin's Irish Pub, over the decades. And it's not the venue. It's the team. They're certainly making it more challenging to support them. Hard to watch games closely in a bar, but after the first 15-20 mins it didn't seem like we were really in the match. Really really bad day at the office for Emery and his boys.
Not saying he wouldn't be worth it (I don't know either way) but I'm pretty sure him or any other actually good player is out of our budget range now
I think Emery is partly to blame for sure but Ozil has no acceleration left at all. I'd be very interested to see if someone can get their hands on his tracking stats
Yeah, part of my "yep" to @DaPrince84 was also agreeing that I think he's reached the physical cliff.
Turns out that a club with a poor defense, GK that needs oil more than the Tin Man, Ozil finishing his season long vacation, and without ideas going forward isn't getting into the CL next season. This club needs to replace Ozil with someone with creativity and drive, buy a commanding Dmid, and fix the backline...but we won't. Wake me up in August for the next season of "Annoying Futility FC"
I'm not laying the blame on Ozil. He's merely one of several weaknesses. Just happens to to be the most expensive weakness, so purging his salary offers the most potential for impacting the roster. I'm of the "defense needs makeover" crowd in terms of priority.
All trolling aside I think this is pretty much how I've felt about Emery for the last third of the season: I don’t think it’s working with Emery and I’ve little faith it will. He was given a really hard job and I’m not into sacking willy nilly per se, but just because it was a hard job, doesn’t mean it hasn’t been done badly. You don’t give more time for the sake of being nice.— Tim Stillman (@Stillmanator) May 29, 2019
I don't see how we get out of our current predicament outside of getting lucky and having an easy path to the top 4, which we had, and couldn't take advantage of. We have a budget of 40m. You can't fix this team on 40m + whatever pittance we make selling our dead weight. So we likely finish in the Europa League spots again, and continue lacking the money to turn things around. Emery was gifted an opportunity to get us out of this cycle and he royally screwed it up.
And in a way it’s proof that his athleticism was a major component of what a great player he was. Yet people complained he was slow and didn’t run enough when he was running farther, sprinting more often and clocking higher top speeds than anybody else on the pitch in most of the games he played. Too much mileage, sadly. (Although I think he could still be a great player by modifying his game and having his skills utilized correctly by a good manager.)
He was gifted two opportunities and blew them both spectacularly. He should be sacked for how the league season ended. This match today was a calamity on the continental stage. Shame the club is sleep at the wheel. I think he could have a second act playing deeper in central midfield. Emery doesn’t have the skill and balls to even try that.
At one point we were something like 75% to get in via the league and 30% through Europa. Absolutely colossal failure.
The first question I asked my finances coach Robyn over at Skookum after telling her about our 4-1 loss in that horrible display over at Baku: ....."is there enough in this week's grocery budget for perhaps throwing in a bottle of Thunderbird after this match?" Hey we ain't drinking any champagne after this game, it may be about time for me to retire my song as AK47 "Arsenal" after this year, after all, in the second verse, the last remaining player on that list of those mentioned, is Mesut Ozil, and after he leaves the entire song won't make sense to anyone who is not Premier League football-educated. Not too many folks here in Port Townsend let alone Seattle (where it is both Sounders country and also Seahawk Nation) know who any of them are (or were) and this year was going to be my last year of performing LIVE as AK47, pending of I don't get more shows next year, so with not many knowing who Arsenal are or who The Invincibles or Arsene Wenger were, it might be moot point to keep that song (although it was a stroke of genius when written and recorded back in 2015 after acquiring that instrumental karaoke cover version of Maroon 5's "Animals") in my set list anymore after this year. BTW, earlier last year I FINALLY found the OFFICIAL instrumental as performed by Maroon 5, it's basically the instrumental tracks with the vocals stripped out of it, so I used my YouTube downloader and recorded it onto CD and uploaded it onto the existing master recording of "Arsenal", using gut instinct on the hope that I got the timing down perfect, and I DID! Now it sounds much better with Maroon 5 playing it than that crappy karaoke version, but if Mesut Ozil goes, it may be moot. Here is the official instrumental as recorded my Maroon 5 themselves:
Which is why we should be selling guys like Lacazette, Aubameyang, and anyone else outside of our young players.
Manolas is 27. He deserves to go to a club that can compete now. Leaving one shit show for another would not be a great career move at this point.
Yeah, think we are gonna have to sell anyone of value outside of our core group that we want to build on.
I don't get it, how can anyone justify having an owner like Stan Kroenke who probably doesn't care about us??? He has all the funds to get the Rams into the Super Bowl, make them annual perennial contenders for both the NFC West title and perhaps a Super Bowl, and is willing to spend some dough to bring guys like QB Jared Goff and RB Todd Gurley to put up points and put butts into the LA Coliseum seats, but yet he's not willing to spend that same kind of $$$ to bring us to a title run every year and top 4 qualification and our customary place in UCL competition??? I don't get it. Even Bully or Claude from Arsenal Fan TV (God how long has it been since I watched Robbie and the guys on their YouTube channel?) could manage this squad better than what I've seen the past 3 years!!! #KroenkeOut #BringInBully #ClaudeForGeneralManager #DTin #ArsenalFanTV #AFTV
Here is what Claude of Arsenal Fan TV thinks about our miserable display of footy we put on this afternoon:
That’s exactly what I’m thinking, as well. Scholes did it. Pirlo did it (although his transition backwards came earlier, he never had the athleticism Özil did.) There are plenty of other examples. I also remember a while back asserting that in a Pep Guardiola team, Özil would be a central midfielder. Nobody believed me at the time, but I think I was right.
And Özil Derangement Syndrome continues apace. The continued focus on him when he’s anything other than spectacular is a distraction from the real issues with this embarrassment of a club.
Lee Dixon on BBC Radio was slamming Emery & Ozil. And I think it's pretty safe to say that he's not imagining Ozil can likely be reinvented as a DM or CB. For me Ozil was just not a positive factor tonight, when we (I) had dreamed/prayed he might be. But definitely Mesut was not the biggest or only factor. I must say I'm more than a bit surprised at how big a collective failure we produced tonight. Most people, including the odds-makers, had this match as basically 50/50, maybe a slight edge to Chelsea. But not a 4-1 result, where the team on the short end of that scoreline basically didn't even show up. And TBH if not for a couple of excellent saves by Cech, it coulda pretty easily been 6-1. With the relative dearth of quality chances we got tonight, we needed to be MUCH more clinical. But there was one moment near the end of the game that sticks in my mind. IIRC, Laca on the right from 8 yards shoots and the keeper saves, the ball caroms to Auba at 6 yards out on the left, and the defender saves. Maybe their shots weren't horrible, but clearly Chelsea's defense was up to the task. Laca didn't have many sniffs on goal. Auba had more and wasted them. In the final analysis, neither of our vaunted strikers was able to produce the goods. There were also significant deficiencies in defense & midfield, but in the interest of time and words, I won't go there right now.
It's absurd. By no means was he good tonight. But the main problem or contributor to the loss? GTFOH. Our entire backline was awful and the midfield was a non-entity.
Where is that Nigerian dude that wanted to buy the team a couple years ago when you need him. He needs to show up, buy out Stan, fire Emery, hire Allegri and give us a reasonable amount for the start of a rebuild.