Quote Originally Posted by selassie View Post
Oh Emery is a far superior tactician to Wenger, I have no doubt about that and I have been happy in the main with his pragmatic approach to game management.

Where I'm uncomfortable with Emery is with his recent chopping and changing of the formation and personnel to protect the defence. It isn't working, if anything we look a lot worse in all areas, he absolutely should not be persisting with this 5 at the back malarkey. We were doing fairly well last year with the 4-3-3 formation, yes we got lucky and yes the defence was leaky...but I see no improvement or progress with this back 5, we look worse!

I know I have come across quite strong on Emery but it is only because what I saw in the early stages was very promising compared to the current mess.

I didn't expect top 4 this season and am happy to write off this season but I do want to see some sort of progress, yes I realise that we may not have the personnel that Emery wants to execute his project, but at some point he is going to have to stick to a trusted formation with the players he has and make do with it. Yes we have limitations in the team / squad....but we genuinely did look like we were moving forward earlier on in the season, we looked like a legit top 4 team...not anymore...we have gone back to that "Wenger" clone team of last season!
This is a large part of the point I’m making - when you are changing such an ingrained culture any progress won’t be continual in the early stages. You’ll take forward steps and backward steps along the way. The only way to get a clear view on how well Emery is performing is after about 18 months. So I’m not surprised we’ve looked good at times with a new identity, then at others we’ve looked liked the team of old.

Especially in defence where we’ve been down to bare bones during December, so I’m not surprised we’ve chopped and changed back there with the personnel we’ve had. Holding’s been out, Kos has struggled to come back, Mustafi has been out, along with Bellerin, Mav and Monreal - so I guess he’s been trying to figure out what to do with what we have. I also think the change in our style in terms of work ethic has taken its toll on the team, which is only natural. The same thing happened to Liverpool during their first season under Klopp. I know that by mid-November we’d put in more yards than any other team in the league, so again I’m not surprised in our first season we see some drop off at around this stage. It takes time to get that style into players who have never done it every week. And, of course, some of the players just aren’t up to it.

The big difference is that Klopp didn’t have such a legacy to shift out of the players and the set-up around them. If there is a budget in the summer and Mislintat spends it well so we can make some changes squad and we are still going through the same old thing next January, then we should be concerned.