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....

..and being petty over the years. We could have had Anelka for a few productive years a dozen years ago or so but he said no. We could have had Fabregas for a few productive years but he said no.
Old news. We had a captain that wasn't good enough to start (BFG, even though I liked him personally).

I still say you can't put the blame totally on Wenger. Wenger isn't the board. Wenger isn't the owner. Kroenke and the board let Wenger do whatever people are blaming him for. I said it then, that what owner and board would not have called Wenger in for a chat during that time? The first time they really stood up to Wenger was last season. Several years too late.

You lead from the top and Kroenke is an absentee owner who I still say couldn't name any position by its proper name past goalkeeper and defense. If he did, he's using ice hockey references because the positions are almost the same. How insane is it to have an owner who doesn't under the sport? The Emirate sheiks understand the sport. We are the ONLY club in the league whose owner doesn't know jack schitt about the sport. That's the real problem. You can't yearn for trophies in a sport you don't understand. I would not be shocked if he came to an away match and had to ask which team is ours because neither are in red. I am not joking either. Because I'd be surprised if he was in the loop to approve new strips.

The squad could and should be better, especially if we are going to try for top 4 in earnest and at least challenge for the title for part of the season. We do need fresh blood, anyone can see that. However, its good enough to. Our form in Europe and against the top 6 recently (admittedly a lot of that at home) suggests we do have it in us and we must take into account the injuries. They are a huge factor (Bellerin, etc). If the present squad had some balls on them we'd be favorites for a top 4 spot right now and possibly vying for 3rd place. Even when losing Sperz looked miles better when we are losing. We don't look like we have a shot at all when we are losing but you can see Man Utd, Chelsea and Sperz look like they could pull something out of their games when losing. We look outplayed. I don't know how to solve that mental strength issue but it desperately needs solving because good players have come in and we still lack it.

When City got their money they were spending hundreds of millions and still bottled plenty of games for a while until they put it all together. They brought in good players during that time. They lacked mental toughness but now have it.

Maybe its a matter of pride for us. Who on the squad can you say are fighting for the shirt? That they truly love the club like the players years ago did? Or even close?

I get all that and I hate Kroenke too and yes he took way too long to sack Wenger but it was only in the last couple of seasons where the majority of our fans wanted Wenger out and started being vocal. I used to get chewed out on here for suggesting it.

It wasn’t kroenke who spunked 100 million on perez, Xhaka and Mustafi or let Ramsey and Sanchez run their contracts down.

After having Wenger in post for 22 years, I can now see Arsenal becoming a sacking club. Poor performances on the pitch, driven to a significant extent by the lack of funds Kroenke lets them spend, could lead to the head coach being dismissed at regular intervals after the fans got irate with him.

It's a way of deflecting blame from Kroenke. A sort of 'look, I have done my bit by sacking an underporming manager after a bad seson or two. So do not blame me as I am not to blame'.

I can see that too.

Enabled by fans having ago at managers because the players aren’t showing enough pashun (whilst clearly not being good enough)

I hadn't thought of that but you could be right, the only thing that might stop this happening is having to pay up the remaining years of the contract should he sack them, we all know how cheap Stan is, maybe he'll keep giving out 1 year rolling deals to any Tom, Dick or Harry so that he doesn't have to!.

...on a side note.

Game of Thrones!!! Epic Episode 3

If the show's characters were Arsenal.

The Mad King - Kroenke
Jon Snow - Emery (put in an impossible situation)
Hand of the King (former) - Gazidis
Robert Barotheon - Wenger (Started off great but ended in disaster)
Littlefinger - Dein (machinations that eventually backfired)
The small council - The Arsenal board that sold us out.

In the 2015/16 season Emery's Sevilla went the whole season without winning a single away game.

That was Arsene Wenger's fault...

Can we stop with the Emery inherited dross and any manager is bound to fail with this lot narrative? He, along with a bunch of other managers, applied for the job knowing full well what he's getting himself into. He's confident of doing the job required of an Arsenal head coach, and if he can't, it simply means he and the board had over-estimated his capability.

Oh yeah ..... and who pray tell me .... in the masses wants to hear / or agrees that Mustafi is a very good player ....?

People may not agree but it is softening the ground for when he is still at the club at the start of next season. Wants us to believe that there is a very good player in there who is about to be released.

By the way what home remedy did you try that almost ended your time with us? And the reaction of your missus - do you want to tell us?

Apart from the other burning issues you raise (eg Kolasinac or Clichy?), why do you think that Chelsea, Spurs and for that matter, Manchester United, are struggling so much in this league?

Chelsea and United due to continuous managerial instability. (Particularly united as Chelsea are more used to it) . They are better than they have shown this year with the personnel they have.

Tottenham due to their attention being consumed by the champions league and loss of focus by all the stadium nonsense

What were the expectations of Emery given the players he had and the £60m odd he had to spend?
Some people say if he got back in the top 4 at the first time of asking it would be a miracle, others too 4 was the expectation.
Getting back in the champions league was his brief for me. I’d much rather he does that via the Europa League cup win than the league!

Trying to remain positive

In the summer if we could flog Mustafi, Chambers and el Nenny for about 40 million we could have a transfer pot of around 80 or 90. That would give Emery the money he needs for about 4 players if spent wisely like we did last summer. No matter what we say this is surely possible and then going into next season with renewed hope could be possible.

The narrative we were given was that he is an incredibly studious and driven manager who would leave no stone unturned in his pursuit of excellence. By all accounts he came to his interviews with dossiers on players and explained how he was going to improve them.

Well, injuries aside there is little improvement to be seen defensively. We are top of the league for mistakes leading directly to goals.

I know people were incredibly bored by Wenger's tippy tappy football but when you see us outplayed and outfought by Leicester, who enjoyed the lion's share of the possession and frankly made us look second rate both physically and technically, I find that pretty hard to stomach.

When Emery arrived it seemed he was promising exciting high tempo football with us on the front foot most of the time. I get that we have some limited players but even so we are quite stodgy in our play, even at home, and the less said about our away performances the better.

So let’s say we fire Emery. Who do we get to replace him?

What manager out there can draw better defensive performances from Mustafi, Monreal and Xhaka.

Even George couldn’t get that lot defending

Personally I think many of the players look dead on their feet at the moment. They had 2 pretty big games against Napoli (people talking about wot progress ? Arsene would have lost that)

Incidentally I don’t think the Europa league is helping us get a higher league position. Imagine if we didn’t have to play all those games this season. Surely top 4 would have been a genuine possibility

They are still international footballers. Surely, they cannot be as bad as they look?

I am not advocating sacking Emery but I am increasingly underwhelmed by his management. Now we could end the season with a european trophy, although getting past Valencia is certainly no gimme with some of the bottlers we have, which would be amazing. We could also have a fantastic summer of transfer activity, both ins and outs.

I think what I am really saying is that the signs are a little disappointing at the moment but I don't think we have any choice but to see how the rest of the season and the summer plays out before we can draw any meaningful conclusions.

I think it's unfair to mention Monreal if you're not going to name Koscielny through an act of respect for the latter. Both fine players in their day but the fact is they've grown old together. I'd actually be surprised if Koscielny hasn't given away more goals this season than Monreal.

They both need replacing, so why mention Monreal but not Koscielny? Because if it is due to respect for Koscielny, which I completely understand and inded share, then Monreal deserves exactly the same respect.

I think the last 4 league games have been unacceptable. I’m on the fence about him as he’s made mistakes but I just don’t believe many other managers getting more out of Mustafi and Xhaka and co.

I just look at our weird line up for the Everton game,

Xhaka and Torreira, basically 2 midfield anchors not really a distribution hub,

Then ..

Iwobi Plus Mhikitaryan who just run down alleys.

It’s simply not a recipe to create chances and then you look on the bench and there’s barely anything there. You couldn’t criticise the starting line up.

There is no dynamic player in our squad, nobody who can deliver a final ball of any quality or who can manipulate the ball like an Ericsson.

I’m really not sure from a managerial position he could have done anything more in that game yet he’s getting pelters. If you can’t retain possession your defence will be under the cosh.

I think they are both decent servants who have had their time but for me Monreal looks the least preferable to be able to deliver at the level we need right now. Kosielny could be brought in for 5 to 8 games a season as an experienced head.

Me too. Trophy wins are more memorable and enjoyable than a top four finish. They end up on the clubs honours list. The only top four finishes that do are when you actually win the league.

I disagree. Moreover, Koscielny is even older than Monreal and has lost his pace, such a strong quality for him once. We've seen it this season, most recently with Vardy's first at Leicester. If he plays eight games next season we're in just as much trouble as if Monreal does.