Measuring Success - The Arsenal (Emery) Barometer

Troopz is funny fam

 

Is Aubamayeng going to frozen out now too?

 

Reading something this morning that is claiming the reason we haven't sacked Emery yet is because we don't want to go the interim route and are having a difficult time finding a permanent replacement available now (either been turned down or not the direction we want tactically). They go on to claim that Arteta is supposedly our last remaining desirable option before the summer but there is doubt that City will let him leave mid season.

 

he’s just like that

it’s a uk road man thing

 

the fans reflect the club, apparently.

 

I had brought up the possibility of missing out on the EL in the matchday thread, but I was looking at our upcoming fixtures and it is not that far fetched.

Our next 10 games (if I am being generous):
Southampton (H) - W
Norwich (A) - D
Brighton (H) - W
West Ham (A) - D
Man City (H) - L
Everton (A) - D
Bournemouth (A) - D
Chelsea (H) - D
Man Utd (H) - D
Crystal Palace (A) - D

That is 13 points in our next 10 games leaving us with 30 points from 22 games. We would still need ~26-29 points from our remaining 16 games to get to the 56-59 point range.

Of those remaining 16 games, we have trips away to City, Chelsea, Spurs, Wolves, and a home game to Liverpool. So let's be very generous and say we get a draw against Spurs and Wolves. That means we need to get 24 from 11 games to hit the 56 point mark (if you could maintain that level of performance over the entire season you would get 84 points).

 

Didn't click until this morning with the quotes about Ivan watching Emery's career for a long time but does anyone get the feeling that Emery was an intentional parting shot by a guy that was already on his way out the door?

 

Given how he performed at Milan, and looking at the shortlist Ornstein posted, he was just not very good at his job.

 

I want us to backtrack here for a second. Now we know Gazidis was a clown show and probably set this club back a decade due to his incompetence.

But where were Amy Lawrence and Gunnerblog 17 months ago when Emery was hired? None of this is new information, yet they felt the need to write it up now.

 

The fan base needs to prepare for a midtable or bottom half of the table finish.

 

That’s not what I’m saying.

You can write a 500 word article expressing these concerns. They instead expressed optimism and joy over Emery’s appointment. Well maybe not Gunnerblog, iirc. The point is all of this was known about Emery.

 

You aren’t a fan tho lol

 

In the MD thread there has been some discussion/speculation of KSE not wanting to sack Emery so as to save the buyout cost. Then there were rebuttals like these:

Intuitively I agree, but still I decided to do some quick research to give this a bit of a reality check, and here's what I found:

• Emery's salary is not public but refutted to be £5-6M
• Qualification for UEL is £2.5M (€2.9M) and if you win or advance, the prize money can go up by several factors
• EPL prize money changes roughly £2M per each place in the table, e.g. £10M difference between finishing 5th and 10th

So, missing out on just Europa League by just one position in the EPL seems more costly (at least £4.5M) than it would be to buyout Emery's remaining contract*. And if we fall even further down the EPL table it gets even more costly.

*Note: I'm assuming that buying Emery out of the 2nd half of this season's contract would involve paying him roughly the remaining half of his salary, ~£2.5-3M. But I don't pretend to know how a coach's salary contract is written regarding this type of sacking/buyout.

So, if my analysis is right, the financial cost of sticking with Emery, if he's lost the plot, lost the backing of players, fans, etc. is potentially quite a bit greater than if we replace him now with someone who can at least stabilize things, if not do better, i.e. qualify for Europe.

And if this is correct, then I assume that our board is also fully aware of this too.

Thus the key decision point for Raul & Josh seems to be whether they judge that Emery is bringing us down further, and a replacement would at least steady the ship. And I suspect that is one of the biggest reasons for any kind of perceived delay in pulling this trigger. Along with other logistical reasons like securing his replacement.

Edit: Arseblog said today that he thinks the cost of buying out Emery would be ~£10M. That's because he factored in a few of his key staff who would almost certainly be fired along with him. Even though I had mentioned just that issue in an earlier post, I forgot about it in the context of this one. Still, even at this higher cost, the math still works out pretty easily to support the above premise.

 

I haven't read the latest Ornstein piece (I rarely read his work anyway) nor have I listened to all of Arsecast, but when I heard that upper management was giving Emery their full backing, the first thing into my head was "aha the dreaded full-backing-of-manager comment, eh?"

So why is Arseblog and many others so up in arms about what the club supposedly said via Ornstein? Why are they taking the statement of support at such literal, face value, rather than the common cynical interpretation that so many fans and journos (including Arseblog) have expressed about other teams managers in the past?

 

Its come across more as genuine support of the manager rather than the "vote of confidence" that indicates he is about to be fired. They have brought up excuses and mentioned seeing improvements at Leicester. There has been a bunch more chatter in support of Emery rather than a curt "he has our full support" statement.

 

I didn’t say write anything mean. I said be objective.

And Lawrence was talking positively about him on podcasts too.