Emery is proving himself as a very capable manager (not that he was ever incapable, but more because of the uncertainty), I love watching him on the sidelines - it’s such a monumental change from having wenger sat in the chair with his arms crossed.
The team are starting to have that winning mentality that we have craved for the last 10 years, and he is absolutely key to that.
Ironically, Wenger going last season was the best thing to happen to us since Wenger arrived all those years ago.
Last edited by KSE Comedy Club; 26-10-2018 at 02:10 PM.
He's doing a great job. There's still issues like our defending and the slow starts, but hopefully he will sort that out once he's had enough time to get his messages accross and had a couple of transfer windows to get our squad in shape.
Some good analysis here
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/46044105
I was listening to the Arseblog podcast last night about Sunday’s game and they made the point that with a two week break now upon us, Emery has time to sit back and think about how to get the most effective set of players working well on the pitch
They made the point that at the moment he's still trying to fit square pegs into round holes, the most obvious example being Auba on the left which doesn't really work
So he now perhaps just needs to focus on a really effective 11 rather than trying to squeeze certain players in.
I think that’s a really good point and starting with Bournemouth away we need to see that he’s thought through how to get a cohesive team out there consistently, not just for something like the Liverpool game, and get us firing properly right from the first whistle rather than by making changes at half-time.
They also were asked a fascinating question about which players they thought were likely to be part of Emery’s long-term squad, and using the players that played on Sunday as a basis, from memory they thought the following:
Yes:
Leno
Bellerin
Mustafi (sadly)
Holding
Torreira
Xhaka (again, sadly)
Iwobi
Laca
Guendouzi
No:
Kolasinac
Mhki
Auba – surprising though you can see where they’re coming from given Emery is struggling to work out how to best use him and it’s unlikely he’d be happy being a supersub replacement for Welbeck
Ozil (although apparently he’s an ambassador for our new kit sponsor Adidas, so that might complicate things)
Ramsey
Clearly Nelson has to be a part of our future and hopefully Nketiah, also AMN, plus clearly we’ll have to replace Cech in the next season or two along with Monreal
If Mustafi, Xhaka and to some extent Holding are part of our long term plan and we're going to build a team with them, IMO we can forget of winning anything or even challenging, they are sub-standard, in the case of the 1st two error prone and frankly just not the kind of quality you need.
That's my one reservation about Emery so far, sticking to players who aren't good enough, I don't really understand why a manager can't see certain players are liabilities, I understood with Wenger because he was blinkered and was out to prove the world and his dog wrong, but Emery doesn't have that excuse.
Kolasinac, Ramsey, Mhki I don't care about, we don't need them, Aubameyang scores goals so we need to keep him as long as he's still delivering, Ozil is Ozil brilliant one moment and poor the next, but can't see us selling him.
What about the young Greek CB, I guess he just doesn't rate him right?
He's going to have to make use of Ozil either way as he won't be able to get rid of him.
Mav is injured and has been for some time. Holding is a good player and I didn't think played badly against Wolves. Traore would have skinned anybody in Holding's position for their late chance....and I include Bellerin in that.
Holding is OK, but he's nothing special, I think we need a really top quality CB and then another young one who has the potential to be top class, that could be Mavropanos but it may not be, it isn't Holding though IMO and I personally think we need to stop settling.
We could still get rid of Chambers, Mustafi and Koscielny (though I don't want him out myself) in the summer and Sokratis is no spring chicken so with that in mind.....even if you don't rate Holding, there's no reason to go fishing for a buyer.
Holding being here doesn't preclude us from signing a top Centre half. Being miserly / short of funds does.
I wanted us to sign one in the summer myself