What happens if we lose to Chelsea in the final and finish behind them in 5th but ahead of Utd? Effectively means they'll have qualified for the Champions League twice, and we'd be next in line via both competitions?

Very good question, I was wondering that myself.

There was a story yesterday that he wants to make Arsenal the best club in England and the world so his ambitions are clearly pretty lofty

Good luck with that one.

Maybe we could get Guardiola If we just don’t tell him he’s only got 40 million to spend he might take the job.

Wouldn't we just go into the Europa League next season? Chelsea would have got into the Champions League via a top four finish and winning the Europa League. But so would either Liverpool or Tottenham if they finish in the top four and one of them wins the Champions League.

Herein lies the problem Niall

My biggest beef with Emery .... okay he inherited a Wenger team but he has allowed this f***&^%% soft cock ring a ring a rosy at the back to continue ..... of course adventurous passes go astray when you spend the majority of your time making 'safe' passes to unmarked team mates five metres away .

Never mind personnel ... he's had a whole year to eradicate that trait .


We have a tendency to focus on any injury to excuse performances ... we'd be far better with Ramsay available ..?? Really ....he's had a fair number of limp penied performances when starting . Bellerin has also been dire at times .

I'd give Unai another year ..........BUT can anyone honestly see him playing the Grim Reaper and clearing out the deadwood .... as most of us advocate ..... his body language certainly doesn't suggest he is a no nonsense hard arse .

Arsenal Football Club have become a comfy convalescent home for high waged non performers . The majority will still be with us next season
........... and with Emery robbed of the fresh "new broom" advantage he enjoyed at the start of this season I can see plenty of heart ache ahead .

These fairies can't put in decent performances now ; when the prize of possible champions league football is on offer ... what to expect when the hum drum of a new season starts ...?

After a restless nights sleep I came to the conclusion that as well as a large number of players who need to go I think the defensive coaches at the club must be sacked. I have seen no improvement, rather the contrary, this season and they must also pay the penalty.

How is it Southhampton were woeful mid season but a new manager turned them around defensively whilst we actually have got worse as the season progressed.

The loss of Holding was not good but we don’t even know if he is good enough long term for the club. He put together a few good games but that is not enough to get our hopes up.

As for Leicester I still think Rodgers will be sacked next year. Whether it is before Emery is one for the bookies.

Even if he wanted to he couldn’t, the money just isn’t there. If he only has 50 million to spend that won’t buy us a wide man of the required quality we need let alone make us contenders again.

We need 5 players, he probably has only enough money for a couple.

People are now slagging off Emerys English even though Pochetino couldn’t speak a word for more than the same time frame.

It’s just pointless

Yep, that’s right. England have 4 champions league places. A 5th place is only opened up if an English team that finishes outside the top 4 wins the Europa League or champions league.
If both champions league and Europa league winners are English and both finish outside the top 4 then the 4th place team in the league is demoted to the Europa league.
I think I might be right in saying that the winner of the Europa league also enters the champions league as one of the 8 top seeds in the group stage.

Yeah, that's how I thought it worked.

Emery needs to do a GG. Get rid of the "big name" players and build HIS team with youngsters. Mariner, Woodcock, Nicholas, et al were all disposed within a couple of seasons GG taking over. GG rebuilt the defence with Dixon, Bould and Winterburn plus Seaman. Emery's problems are quite similar - leaky defence and non-performing ageing superstars.

Okay another one from out of right field. See if City will loan us Maherz next season.

but a lot of these teams that have outplayed us of late Watford , Palace , Wolves , Brighton , Everton , Leicester wouldn't been assembled for much more than fifty million .

I don't harbour thoughts of league titles anymore ... I'm just sick of these painfully slow buildups , an exchange of f*&&%$$$ useless passes back and forth in non threatening positions .

Three of the most useless pricks at our club cost the most , so it's not just a question of money .

We lose I've got no problem ...... but watching/ reading about us get turned over by 'lesser' just because they had more 'bottle' is what annoys me most .

Agreed Goonie ... but another important factor his team had in ...Seaman , Lukic , Bould , Adams , Dixon , Winterburn , Richardson , Marwood , Merson , Rocastle , Smith , Hayes , Allinson , Davis , Thomas ........ see it

They were all English ... chuck in O'Leary and Quinn from across the canal ....wasn't hard for the Scot to get his message across

We now have the United Nations team in which you need twenty translators to hand out a bollocking or convey team tactics .
There is no common spine , just don't have the same bond .

Suarez had a full season under Emery at Sevilla. He knew the player.

That's almost an irrelevance though. We have a new keeper, centre back and defensive midfielder this season yet we are conceding a stupid amount of goals. We went through a phase of being hugely conservative - 5 at the back against the likes of Bournemouth. We all know he had a tough job to get us back into Top 4, but there have been a lot of failings. He could have done considerably better and this past week has been a shambles.

Yeah thanks Dec .... wasn't too flash , lack of sleep was the biggest problem . So desperate to drop off yet unable to .... very dibilitating . Great now .

Good to see you back Kiwi, glad the health has improved.

Not overly, no.

If they stayed I wouldn't be upset but I do think they are players we could shift to raise some funds. Lacazette maybe harder to replace than Bellerin but for me hasn't justified his reputation.

Some of our players are lazy. Their off the ball running is non existent. Aubameyang is quite lazy nowadays. He does not run to open spaces to receive the balls, as much as he used to.

Players who play with energy & drive are Lacazette, Guendouzi, Monreal, Ramsey, Torreira, AMN, Welbeck, Kolasinac (on & off), Bellerin. Need to bring up Alexis, we missed his energy.

Worst culprits are Xhaka, Mkhitaryan & Özil. Elneny is most times lost at sea. Iwobi runs but headless & clueless. That's our midfield right there. That's why opposing managers knows how to target us. Mkhitaryan is simply going through the motion. No guts, no drive, no desire, no purpose, no intent to make a difference.

That is the same storybook that has Mustafi as a very good player. He is a politican who is saying what the masses want to hear. He does not believe it.

My first Arsenal team was the one GG built to win the league at Anfield so I don’t remember the bigger name players that came before that GG dumped, but I would certainly be up for this sort of plan.
What would be awful would be to accept we have no money to spend and just muddle on with the same group of under performing players.
Can you imagine the praise A manager would get now if he bought through virtually a whole team of English academy players, supplemented them with young English players from the lower leagues, installed a 21 year old as captain and went on win the league at the Etihad on the final day of the season? That group of English players would certainly get a lot more international caps than GG’s group did

I am sure this lot speak/understand a bit of English at least. :)

Lacazette
Iwobi Nelson
Torreira Guendouzi AMN
Kolasinac Holding Sokratis Bellerin
Leno

Subs. Martinez, Saka, Mavropanos, Emile Smith Rowe, Willock, Aubameyang, Nketiah

So......we need to get rid of Özil (350k a week), Mika (200k a week), Xhaka, Mustafi, Monreal at the very least. An argument can be made for selling Iwobi as well. I'd keep Kos as a back-up if he was happy with that.

The question is, do we have the people with the nous to get all this done quickly and without just giving them away. I doubt it.

Who is going to want Özil or Mika on their wages? Nobody I suspect, bar perhaps a Chinese outfit.

In the unlikely event that we can get these players out of the door we then need to replace them which is no easy task given our alleged budget and the fact that if we are not in the CL it will be hard to attract the right level of player. We will be forced to take gambles on young up-and-coming kids with the potential to be top players.

It all feels a bit like the Liverpool of several years ago who were always on the perhiphery and never quite able to compete at the top level, but even they had Gerrard.

Xhaka is saying he is unable to explain our away day woes.

Well, let me give you a small clue, if you didn't have the attention span of a two year old and tracked your runner then maybe they might not have scored the first goal.

Well Henrik has his contract till until June 2021 on 170k a week and he’s 31 in January.

That means if we want rid of him we will definitely have to give him away on a free and even then pray some club out there is interested in him and believes 170k a week is good value.

Özil will be with us next year as I can’t see anyone being crazy enough to pay his salary. Even the Chinese

I think we may have to loan out likes of Özil, Mkhi and Mustafi if Emery does not want them to be part of the squad.

Kevin Whitcher hits the nail on the head again

There’s little debate that the squad looks in dire need of surgery, and there is still a hangover from the Wenger era in the quality of the players and the disproportionate wages some of them are getting. This millstone will take more than another year to phase out, and by the time that happens, Emery himself will have probably gone.


https://www.onlinegooner.com/articles/view/4762

I agree but it's also worth reading Arseblog this morning.

Unai Emery had a chance to basically secure top four this week and Champions League football for next season. He was in a fantastic position to do it, and he failed miserably. I keep hearing people make excuses like these aren’t his players, but were they his players when we beat United, played very well against Sp*rs, beat Chelsea, beat Napoli over two legs without conceding etc? You can’t pick and choose.

I'm not sold on his approach so far.

Hard to disagree with any of this:

https://www.suburbangooners.com/2019/04 ... -bottlers/

I’m not convinced myself and think like you he’s a transitional manager. A quick round up of the mistakes he’s made. 5 at the back, dropping Özil (frustrating yes but has to play) dropping Lacazette at the start of the season, probably making too many changes too often.

However that aside I can’t get the thought out of my head that this squad is one of the most mediocre we have had in years. There’s absolute dross in the squad because Gazidis let Wenger run his squad down. I don’t even think our players are even as good as the ones we had a few seasons back?

Would you swap Kolasinac for clichy ?
Would you swap mhikitaryan for Walcott?
Would you swap Iwobi for the OX?
Would you swap Xhaka for Cazorla?

I would and some of those players who left are hardly world beaters, the team is visibly worse than a few years back.

Do you think a 5th or 6th place finish would be disappointing from Emery considering the circumstances? I think Chelsea and spurs have far better players than us and are underachieving in the league.

I think position-wise, we're par for the course. But as Arseblog suggests, it's the timidity of some of our formations and approach to some highly winnable games. He's got it right in the bigger games at home largely but plays too safe in games against more average opponents. EVen before AMN was sent off, after twenty minutes we had 19% possession!! Against Leicester City! That's embarrassingly poor. I think he could be doing better in many ways, even with what he has.

Oh undoubtedly it was looking poor before the sending off. I just look at some of the players and think your just not good enough and it’s beyond any level of coaching to get more from them. At some point these players will hurt you.

Xhaka was jogging around the pitch like it was a kick about. I agree with souness that if Mustafi can’t work out he needs to be goal side at 27 years of age he’ll never learn and don’t get me started on Iwobi and mykhitaryan who have me praying for the return of Theo Walcott.

That’s 4, simply 4 players who are weak links by and large. Most teams can get away with one or two but four.

Across competions, up until the point when Ramsey's move to Juventus was confirmed on 11 February, he had started 16 games. How well did he play in any of them, regardless of his fine finish at Craven Cottage?

Ramsey's form really improved quite dramatically once his move to Juventus was sealed. Maybe it wasn't a question of attitude. But if not, unless it's pure coincidence which seems a little far-fetched, there must be some sort of explanation.

Emery is in trouble when relatively mild bloggers such as Arseblog are coming out against him this early into his reign.

If you look at his record in the round it has to be acknowledged he's done a fantastic job in the home fixtures this season - though it has to be said we were fairly fortunate in a few of those early victories - we totally mugged Everton and I think West Ham could have got something at the Emirate this year. But overall, many of those very good results Arseblog mentions were achieved at home.

Away, completely different story and I got to say that the manager has a very poor defence to work with and we also lack creative players who can carry the ball and hurt the opposition with dribbling/bit of skill. With end product. As Kiwi often says, we are a passing outfit and therefore sometimes easy to negate away from home.

The Palace game he definitely got the team selection wrong for that one but it did look as if he had rectified that as by the 46th minutes we were 1-1 and should have wrapped up the game until the defensive shambles occurred again.

There are too many similarities with the last years of Wenger this season which makes me more inclined to look at the quality of player we are putting out these days. They've actually done well to be where they are.

I'm not sure if Emery is the man; and I'm not sure if he will sign the players we need; but I'd be prepared to see what he can do in the summer.

Of course, there may well be things going on behind the scenes where that doesn't play out.

You are correct IMO. I can't recall which one of the cup games he played in but he just turned up. It was one we were eliminated from and I think I commented on here. Also there were a couple of games which people may recall where he tried a back heel near the box. Not because it was a good move but simply because he did not want to try and keep the ball. I won't miss him. The only players I have missed over the last few years were Santi, Alexis and before him RVP. Because I think they genuinely bought some added value to the team.

Ramsay was a Wenger buy and I don't think the club will start any recovery to all of them are gone. That includes all the silly contracts negotiated under the Wenger years - Özil, Mhkitarian, Xhaka, Mustafi and on and on down to Jenkinson. Emery will be a busted flush by that time. His health will probably give out because if his blood pressure is anything like mine when watching a game - it is not a good thing.

Yep, Emery's legacy could just be that he was the man who had to ship out all the high earners, low achievers and potentially make Arsenal worse in the immediate to make them better for the future. How long will it take to return to a side full of hungry players irrespective of their talent level? Can't see Emery still being here when it finally happens

He’s 100% getting fired talk about a poisoned chalice people are slagging off the way he speaks already. Even the England manager get 3 years

Letter to f365 today

Arsenal bed-wetting
A simple message on the Arsenal circus. As ever, a lot of bed-wetting taking place.Look I think Emery isn’t blameless and has to drastically improve defensive organisation, absolutely. What I don’t get though, is the comical entitlement of Arsenal fans.

Let’s get one thing straight, it’s a minor miracle Arsenal are in with half a shout at top 4, because with that shower of s***, they should be nowhere near it. I think Arsenal fans need to understand how drastically Wenger harmed that club – some of us called it as far back as 2006. I was saying to a mate yesterday that Wolves, Leicester and Watford have as good/better players than Arsenal. Don’t believe me? Delofeu would breeze past Iwobi. Doucoure is superior to Xhaka + Mkhitaryan put together. At Wolves, Neves is better than any Arsenal midfielder, and Jota, Cody, Moutinho and Boly all walk into the Arsenal team. Keane at Everton is better than Koscielny and even relegated Tielemans of Leicester is excellent. Maddison more productive than Özil. Fulham have better defenders than Mustafi ffs. SAD!

Emery walked in to not only find this dross, but to find out he wouldn’t have money to spend on upgrades because some fraud opted to pay that rabble £200m a year in wages! Wow. So put it this way, if you gave Pep or Klopp: Mustafi, Özil, Xhaka, Mkhitaryan, Welwide, Koscielny, Jenkinson, El-Nenny, Monreal etc. Would they be outperforming Emery? I say no chance. We saw how badly Klopp struggled with Moreno, Lallana, Lovren and Mignolet – not to mention Pep only just scraping 4th with Sagna, Clichy, Navas and Mangala!

Until Emery can clear out all the shockingly overpaid rubbish Wenger left behind, Arsenal will be shopping in the bargain bins. Pochettino has also exposed what a con-job Arsenal under Wenger was, because with half the wage budget, he built a new stadium and is superbly competitive in the PL and CL (FA Cup? LOL). It’s hilarious mind, because for years we heard uninformed bollocks about Kroenke “denying Arsene funds”. If only he had!
Stewie Griffin (If Emery somehow won the EL, he’d have eclipsed Wenger’s entire 30-year European career in his maiden season)

Can't help but jump in on this. Wenger has destroyed Arsenal and being spewing bollocks to his fans for more than a decade. Almost all the top players left during those years, and he never replaced them.

He had wasted so much of the transfer funds and wages on useless players. So many dodgy buys. Too many bought, loaned out and never played for Arsenal. He kept pointing out his good nose for value, but depleted available funds. No guts to pay top dollars for the best, and yet deplete so much for terrible players.

Not this again, sorry but it is quite simple really, Kroenke allowed Wenger to stay around way beyond his sell by date and waste all those funds, how is that Wenger's fault?, managers generally don't sack themselves!.

It is total futility blaming Wenger, Kroenke backed Wenger far too much and should now admit he got it wrong but he won't, instead we'll be back to saving the pennies, all because he got it wrong, now we all have to suffer because he is 'hands off' aka knows f*ck all about football so allowed Wenger to run things into the ground.

Keep blaming Wenger though, that is exactly what Stan wants....