Quote Originally Posted by I am invisible View Post
It does make me wonder whether a part of Emery’s brief is to (at least attempt to) extract as much value as he can from the club’s big investments before writing anyone off? Which, unfortunately, might mean persevering with certain players past the point where they merit it, and shoehorning them into roles they don’t really fit?

It’ll be interesting to see how long that perseverance lasts, if / when results start to turn...
We should be trying to assess all positions and make use of all the best parts in the team, I agree with that but I don’t think that’s happening. Three of our top performers aren’t playing in their natural position. That’s a concern because Emery is sticking with it despite all three not performing well and I now also see him doing the same thing Wenger would where he’d allow players to drift into the position they want to play or have them interchange during parts of the game. I can’t stand that. I’d prefer we play a formation that gets the best out of everyone.

The Ramsey contract situation is telling. Emery came in with a plan for Ramsey and emphasized his importance to the team. Where Ramsey was part of the original plan. Despite news of his contract offer being withdrawn, he still picked him to play that position and I doubt it came as a surprise to him that the club were going to withdraw the contract offer. So why still play him? I don’t think Emery had anything to do with Ramsey’s contract. He still rates Ramsey. Initial reports on the deal for Ramsey said the deal had stalled because of the Ivan Gazidis situation. Now that Ivan is leaving and Raul Sanllehi is taking over, I think it’s Raul’s decision to withdraw the deal. We’ll soon see if he continues to play Ramsey.