Measuring Success - The Arsenal (Emery) Barometer

Torreira, Guendouzi and Holding are examples of young players that were relatively cheap and will probably become key players in the future. Throw in an academy product or two, like Reiss Nelson and you are starting to form the core of a young team that has the potential to be competitive.

 

Not competitive with Man City or Liverpool

 

No now. Its a project.

 

"You want the truth?"

..........


"You can't handle the truth."

 

****

 

OK, emotions are still a little hot right now... only 5 hours after full time at Baku, but...

I've been saying that we had to wait until May 30th to judge the season. Now it's here, and it was a FAIL.

I'm not going to be someone calling for Emery's head after 1 season, but I'm also not particularly optimistic about him either.

I've also been saying that TBF he should have at minimum, one major transfer window, with some reasonable funds to spend, before we judge him overall.

He'll get that window the next 2 months, BUT sadly he probably won't get too much funds, because he missed his UCL target.

If I was in charge, I'd probably give him to the end of his contract (next summer) before canning him, unless of course we are in/around the relegation spots in January.

And if I had to bet money, I'd bet that's basically what KSE is thinking.

 

I don't think Emery is going to improve. Klopp was instituting a defined philosophy and playing style, which was always going to take time, and there were some bright spots towards the end of the season with Liverpool's attack starting to look like a potent force.

I would have been fine finishing 8th or 9th, and never making it to the Europa League final, if there was some progression from where we started to now. The fact that Emery has to go back to the drawing board and start from scratch tells you that he doesn't know how to fix this. We would have something to build on if he did.

 

Not sure where I'm ultimately going to land on Emery, but there's no point in arguing about it. He has another year on his contract and he's going to get that year to try and improve.

I don't think he's a bad coach, but I do think he has sacrificed his own personal values in terms of trying to adapt to the prem. Wenger and him should sit down and have a long chat. Arsene was stubborn to a fault, and Emery doesn't seem stubborn at all. I mean that in terms of the fact that he won't stick to one system because it's his desired way to play.

 

Point taken about Klopp, but I think we're all dreaming if we think we've got in Emery anything close to the caliber of Klopp.

And good point about Sarri. He's a very weird duck but I kind of like him, especially his honesty & earnestness. And kudos indeed go to him for turning around what seemed like a total disaster just a few months back, e.g. the Kepa defiance incident.

 

I’m beginning to think I was wrong about emery

He really ket us down and the team in the last couple of months

I have a feeling we are going to regress a lot under Kroenke and emery and the squad is not going to improve

Newcastle are about to be taken over by a sheik and wolves and Everton will probably be better than us next year

 

Hey guys, I’m back. I just had to stay away when things got bumpy bc I wanted to give the club the full season and things were pretty nasty. But now it’s time to judge. Here was my original score card from the beginning of the season.

Basically we fell short in all those elements except teaching the EL final. This season feels a lot to me like the Leicester season where a golden opportunity was missed to get more than we deserve bc our rivals were reorganizing.

Bottom line, I’d have to give the club a Letter grade of “D” for the season. In a way it’s good we didn’t nick CL footy, bc now we may be forced to deal with systemic problems at the club rather than having the false dawn of CL footy.

As for emery, I’m okay with another season but if there is a long term manager available then i’m okay if he leaves as well.

 

You're right on most of those things, but Leno was very good for most of the year.

 

I don't think this is fully true. He used a few different formations this year but the play style was essentially the same as what he's been doing in his last few tenures elsewhere. His teams are reactive and aggressively tailored to negate the opposing team's strengths, including involving a lot of counter-attacking (with the exception of PSG but that's kind of a special case). He's incredibly willing to change his tactics and play style to beat his opponent--he calls it being a "chameleon" but you could equally call it pragmatic or more negatively, lacking vision.

He got a massive benefit of the doubt for saying early on that he wants to play as "the protagonists" but his teams have always been more like Mourinho's than Guardiola's or Klopp's or even Wenger's.

I'm not necessarily negative on him a tactical chameleon--especially because as compared to Wenger era it's obvious that the squad has actually watched film now. But he does seem to be overly-conservative as a rule when it comes to being a chameleon and was trying to negate the strengths of relegation-fodder when it's just much more economical when you're a big team to focus more on your own strengths and impose your will in certain matches. His cautious streak literally cost us the Champion's League. This conservatism, and the general lack of vision, is at the heart of why I don't think he'll be a better manager come next year. He's on the complete other end of the spectrum from Wenger--he over-coaches, over-analyzes, and gives players too many instructions to follow which put them into passive mode/analysis paralysis. This is not just a theme at Arsenal but across all his tenures, most spectacularly at PSG with the Barca CL tie. His past teams don't have strong attacking identities and there isn't reason to believe Arsenal will be the exception to that.

 

This year for me is a failure. Not finishing top 4 when we clearly had a good enough team to do so was the worst, but the abject performance in the EL final was purely the shit cherry on the top of a very shitty cake.

But I have said that any new manager we take in needs 4 or so transfer windows. to get the side as they want. We had a lot of players who, frankly, are very underwhelming and for every Torreira we got a Lichsteiner.

The squad needs a massive clean out.

 

Haven't listened to the whole podcast yet, and I don't think this is something we can attribute to Emery--I just put it here as the most obvious place where we're talking about the organization at large. But gunnerblog had some things to say about Arsenal that I 100% agree with:

1135658913960009729 is not a valid tweet id

 

Arsenal fans are pussy so they won't boycott.

But I can def see apathy taking place.

 

Arsenal has been too divorced from any working-class fan support for too long for there to be successful direct action. So the alternative is that the club becomes a tourist attraction as the rich London supporters divest their interest and attention.

 

The real risk is turning into QPR. There's nothing about this club that guarantees continued success. The stadium advantage only lasts as long as there are people willing to fill the seats, and the commercial revenue isn't going to grow when you're finishing 6th over and over again. Thus the feedback cycle is to spend less to get the same profit off lower revenue, then the revenue drops again and spending drops again.

 

Yeah, the huge problem is that there are massive stakes to being poorly-run in the Premier League. Barcelona are maybe as poorly-run as we are but have huge buffers to prevent not being one of the top two clubs in Spain. We are at serious risk of falling into the pack with Everton, Wolves, Watford and Leicester.

And again this is a problem from the management side. We went all out to try and attain Champion's League the past two years. We eschewed developing our own young players and buying young, inexperienced players for spending a premium on players at the tail-end of their prime years who had experience--Auba being the perfect example. When that doesn't work you end up chasing bad money with more bad money. We are, as you say, in a very dangerous vicious cycle and the rumors about swapping Bellerin for Meunier are indicative of that process. It's essentially a deflationary cycle working on one club.

 

Do I like Emery? Not really
Can I think of anyone better that's available? Nope
Can I think of anyone like that, that would come to Arsenal? Bigger nope

Will have to ride Emery out for a bit...