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 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 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.