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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
🥱.
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.
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.
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.