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I haven’t watched a full Arsenal game since the 1-1 draw
with Manchester United. I know how the team is doing, it is nearly impossible
to remain aloof from the goings-on at the club, the way I care and being
heavily involved in social media. However, I have deliberately switched off a
bit because I feel the whole Unai Emery situation, the fan discontent and the
performances on the pitch are mentally destabilizing to me as a fan.
It wasn’t meant to be like this. Barely 13 or so months
ago, a purring 5-1 win over Fulham in the English premier league had fans
singing “we’ve got our Arsenal back.” Little did we know that for Unai Emery,
that would probably be as good as it ever got. Performances at the back end of
last season, especially the 3-2 loss at home to crystal palace; the 4-1 Europa
league final capitulation, and then a sorry start to the season despite good
investment into the squad have led to fans demanding a change of manager.
The biggest blot on Emery’s record as Arsenal manager,
for me, is how he always sets the team up to be pragmatic, whatever the
opposition. Teams such as Wolves, Burnley and Southampton are set up against in
a reactive, do not lose first mentality. Some of the football has been
pathetic.
Frankly, it pisses me off. Arsenal has maybe the third-best attack in the premier league (On paper). Yet as this graphic shared by
Arsenal blogger @gunnerblog shows, the team’s attacking output has been
deteriorating over the past two seasons.
Over time, you expect a coach to improve. Emery's Arsenal are getting dramatically worse.— gunnerblog (@gunnerblog) November 27, 2019
This chart from @Statsbomb shows how Arsenal's shot differential has steadily declined since his arrival.
More of that here: https://t.co/mxoZY6QPbw pic.twitter.com/T88SiiOtl9
Years spent following Arsenal under Wenger,
where the only tactic seemed to be 'attack', probably haven’t helped either.
Majority of football fans the world over are used to
managerial upheaval. Appointing a manager is a gamble at best. Look at Leicester
City. They have gone through Nigel Pearson, Claudio Ranieri, Craig Shakespeare,
Claude Puel and now Brendan Rodgers in the past eight years or so. In that
period, they have gone through the highest of highs and some pretty bad lows. Yet
the Leicester board has always acted when results and performances went south.
So why won't the
arsenal board act on Unai Emery? The set up at the club, with an owner, two
senior executives, and a director of football, mean that a head coach can be
let go without much disruption to the club as an institution. What are they
waiting for? Frankly, it is exasperating.
As I write this, we are set to play Eintracht Frankfurt at
home. Many Arsenal fans will stay away from the match, both at the ground and
on their television sets. I have no intention of watching the match. The period
where arsenal fans were baying for the exit of Arsene Wenger is still raw. I don’t
have the energy of willing the board to make the correct decision again, to
await the manager to be let go while hoping the team does well.
Clearly, many of
my Arsenal supporting colleagues feel the same. I also don’t have the energy
for debates on and off social media on who the best man to replace him should be.
Patrick Vieira? Nuno Espirito Santo? Mikel Arteta? Rafael Benitez? Nobody knows.
All managerial appointees are gambles. Something tells me, looking at other clubs
such as Liverpool and Manchester United, that the chances of getting the
decision wrong is bigger than the opposite. West Ham, Manchester United, Everton
and Watford are clubs in the EPL whose fans would all probably wish they had a
different manager than the man currently in charge.
We could hire Patrick Vieira and one season down the
road, we are back here again, pining for his exit, as his “fraud” credentials
are finally exposed to the world. It is all a bit soul-crushing. It is tiring. The
good times are over, and maybe we should have enjoyed having a manager who was
right for us, more than we did. Who knows when we will finally replace him?
For now, I am content to just watch Arsenal highlights,
dial down the minutes I spend watching the team I love and thinking about it,
as I await the exit of the current manager.
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