This is a really important point that people often do not consider.
One thing is to rotate with a squad that is made up of players of lower quality than your starting XI, another thing is to rotate when you have a 100m player on the bench.
Sure you can choose to rotate to protect your players, but it’s perfectly understandable that coaches that are first and foremost judged by results are reluctant to do that if rotation means likely dropping more points during the season.
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.
One of those 8th place finishes was also on him, he was sacked when we were in the bottom half of the table.
He was given only a season and a half because after a strong start where the football did not pass the eye test but delivered results, eventually things evened out and we bottled a 4th place finish in his first season. After that we were playing the worst football I have ever witnessed Arsenal play, and were in the bottom half of the table by the time he was sacked in his second season. Arteta took over and immediately made the team play better, moved us a couple of spots up in the table to finish 8th and won an FA cup.
I don’t blame him for everything as there was too much shit going on at the club when he was there, but he really did not do that well for Arsenal, it was just not a good fit.
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.
You are right, Lisandro should be definitely up there.
I think it’s more that people forgot about him in general due to his absence rather than remember him but forgetting how he plays. At least that was my case until you mentioned him - I felt like the thread is missing someone important but could not figure out who.