Jamie Carragher: You can make an argument that Unai Emery is the third best manager in this Premier League. If you back over the last 12 months since he came in at Villa, if you are talking about Man Utd, Aston Villa are a better coached team than United. There is no doubt about that.
His “opportunities” at the highest level were PSG that just can’t accept any loss from the managers, even though their squad building is attrocious
And an Arsenal that was barely good enough to qualify for Europe and he took it all the way to the Europa League final, Arteta finished 8th twice while rebuilding that squad.
I generally agree with you, but if you mention Arteta’s first 8th place finish in his first season as a head coach, it’s probably fair to mention that he took over the team when Arsenal was something like 11th-12th under Emery, and also managed to win an FA cup. So you could make an argument that Arteta’s first season was better than Emery’s second season, with the exact same squad.
There is a lot that went wrong while Emery was at Arsenal that he wasn’t responsible for, but he still wasn’t successful with that team at all.
I agree that Emery did not have the club backing him as much as Arteta, but he also did not shoulder as much responsibility as him. Emery was asked to coach the team and that was it, Arteta was asked to rebuild the club from the bottom up. It was also Arteta and Edu who convinced the owners that this needs to be done, whereas Emery was happy to work with what he was given and let the standards sink deeper and deeper.
Otherwise, Emery inherited a makeshift team that previously reached EL semi final and failed to qualify for CL. With that team supplied with new signings, he failed to qualify for CL and lost in the EL final. In the process, the team lost any resemblance of any kind of coherent style of play, and Emery completely lost his dressing room.
Arteta inherited a team from Emery completely devoid of confidence, in the bottom half of the table, with leaky defense, non existent midfield, and streaky attack. He immediately made the team play better and won the FA cup in the process. Then he started cleaning up the mess that he was given, he did make some mistakes which made the next couple of months challenging, but by the end of the 18 months period you mention the club was again on the upward trajectory as opposed to the end of Emery’s era when the club was nosediving fast.
Both Emery and Arteta were dealt a bad hand, but there is no question that Arteta was in the end the better fit and managed to ride it out.
Still, Emery is a very good coach, and he was not responsible for everything that went bad at Arsenal during that time. But let’s not pretend like he was performing miracles now that he’s doing well at a different club, he just wasn’t.
Emery also skated by his first 18 months at Arsenal over performing every metric available. He also came in and tried to change the identity of the entire club overnight, which he was never going to get full support for. Most fans saw a need for a change but not the entire loss of the identity of Arsenal.
Arteta won a trophy, Emery did not. Arsenal got worse under Emery during his time there, and played some of the least inspiring worst football I’ve seen from an Arsenal team and we had zero idea of the style he was trying to play.
Emery is a great coach, but for whatever reason it just didn’t work at Arsenal. I always laugh when outsiders try to tell Arsenal fans about Emery’s time in North London.
It has nothing to do with what was being built around. The football was absolute dire. Even in the season when he had a huge unbeaten run, the xG and underlying numbers were atrocious.
I would only blame arteta with one 8th place finish. We were dropping like a stone by the time he took over and inherited the mess from emery and Freddie. Stabilised us and we finished 8th and won fa cup. However, that 8th place finish is as much on emery and Freddie as it is arteta.
Arsenal were a point away from UCL places in Emery’s first full season and had it not been for auba missing a last minute penalty Vs spurs or emery doing galaxy brain and deciding to rest key players against Brighton and palace at home at the end of the season we would have made top 4. So the team wasn’t “barely good enough to qualify for Europe”.
However emery was a victim of inheriting a mess of Wenger’s final season, gazidis incompetence as a CEO and mislintats “diamond eye” for transfers which was basically ex Dortmund players.
However, he also wasn’t this amazing coach that’s gone under the radar, we held 4 in Baku to Chelsea under a manager who didn’t want to be there and who’s fans that didn’t want him there. He also decided to play a guy in goal who had already accepted a job at Chelsea for the next season. Bought Leno to replace cech cos he couldn’t play out the back and plays him in the biggest game of the season. We were conceding 20 shots on our goal every game, our CDM he bought was played as 10, the players forgot how to make simple and effective passes (freddies first coaching session involved him explaining simple passing to the players) and the football after the initial honeymoon period was boring (pass to kolasinac and get him to cut it back) even in Wenger’s worst years we’d play some decent football.
Revisionist take on that Arsenal squad - Ozil was still near the height of his powers when Emery took charge. He also couldn’t handle the divas of our dressing room of the time
We should have finished 4th that year - we absolutely fell apart at the end
Doesn’t he?
His “opportunities” at the highest level were PSG that just can’t accept any loss from the managers, even though their squad building is attrocious
And an Arsenal that was barely good enough to qualify for Europe and he took it all the way to the Europa League final, Arteta finished 8th twice while rebuilding that squad.
I generally agree with you, but if you mention Arteta’s first 8th place finish in his first season as a head coach, it’s probably fair to mention that he took over the team when Arsenal was something like 11th-12th under Emery, and also managed to win an FA cup. So you could make an argument that Arteta’s first season was better than Emery’s second season, with the exact same squad.
There is a lot that went wrong while Emery was at Arsenal that he wasn’t responsible for, but he still wasn’t successful with that team at all.
Emery had a better first 18 months than Arteta, Emery just didn’t have the club built around what he was trying to do the same way Arteta has.
I agree that Emery did not have the club backing him as much as Arteta, but he also did not shoulder as much responsibility as him. Emery was asked to coach the team and that was it, Arteta was asked to rebuild the club from the bottom up. It was also Arteta and Edu who convinced the owners that this needs to be done, whereas Emery was happy to work with what he was given and let the standards sink deeper and deeper.
Otherwise, Emery inherited a makeshift team that previously reached EL semi final and failed to qualify for CL. With that team supplied with new signings, he failed to qualify for CL and lost in the EL final. In the process, the team lost any resemblance of any kind of coherent style of play, and Emery completely lost his dressing room.
Arteta inherited a team from Emery completely devoid of confidence, in the bottom half of the table, with leaky defense, non existent midfield, and streaky attack. He immediately made the team play better and won the FA cup in the process. Then he started cleaning up the mess that he was given, he did make some mistakes which made the next couple of months challenging, but by the end of the 18 months period you mention the club was again on the upward trajectory as opposed to the end of Emery’s era when the club was nosediving fast.
Both Emery and Arteta were dealt a bad hand, but there is no question that Arteta was in the end the better fit and managed to ride it out.
Still, Emery is a very good coach, and he was not responsible for everything that went bad at Arsenal during that time. But let’s not pretend like he was performing miracles now that he’s doing well at a different club, he just wasn’t.
When Emery first came in we were basically still Wenger’s team. As his influence grew our football got worse.
He’s just a Spanish David Moyes.
Emery also skated by his first 18 months at Arsenal over performing every metric available. He also came in and tried to change the identity of the entire club overnight, which he was never going to get full support for. Most fans saw a need for a change but not the entire loss of the identity of Arsenal.
Arteta won a trophy, Emery did not. Arsenal got worse under Emery during his time there, and played some of the least inspiring worst football I’ve seen from an Arsenal team and we had zero idea of the style he was trying to play.
Emery is a great coach, but for whatever reason it just didn’t work at Arsenal. I always laugh when outsiders try to tell Arsenal fans about Emery’s time in North London.
It has nothing to do with what was being built around. The football was absolute dire. Even in the season when he had a huge unbeaten run, the xG and underlying numbers were atrocious.
We haven’t won anything since so that means he hasn’t lived up to his first months
I would only blame arteta with one 8th place finish. We were dropping like a stone by the time he took over and inherited the mess from emery and Freddie. Stabilised us and we finished 8th and won fa cup. However, that 8th place finish is as much on emery and Freddie as it is arteta. Arsenal were a point away from UCL places in Emery’s first full season and had it not been for auba missing a last minute penalty Vs spurs or emery doing galaxy brain and deciding to rest key players against Brighton and palace at home at the end of the season we would have made top 4. So the team wasn’t “barely good enough to qualify for Europe”.
However emery was a victim of inheriting a mess of Wenger’s final season, gazidis incompetence as a CEO and mislintats “diamond eye” for transfers which was basically ex Dortmund players.
However, he also wasn’t this amazing coach that’s gone under the radar, we held 4 in Baku to Chelsea under a manager who didn’t want to be there and who’s fans that didn’t want him there. He also decided to play a guy in goal who had already accepted a job at Chelsea for the next season. Bought Leno to replace cech cos he couldn’t play out the back and plays him in the biggest game of the season. We were conceding 20 shots on our goal every game, our CDM he bought was played as 10, the players forgot how to make simple and effective passes (freddies first coaching session involved him explaining simple passing to the players) and the football after the initial honeymoon period was boring (pass to kolasinac and get him to cut it back) even in Wenger’s worst years we’d play some decent football.
Revisionist take on that Arsenal squad - Ozil was still near the height of his powers when Emery took charge. He also couldn’t handle the divas of our dressing room of the time
We should have finished 4th that year - we absolutely fell apart at the end
Naw we didn’t deserve it. I get that the team bottled it but the underlying performances weren’t very good. Definitely not top four good.
And Arteta could handle them? All the problem players under Emery were shipped out under Arteta, they were lost causes.
He did fail though. Doesn’t mean he won’t win next time, but he did fail.