Unai Emery has proven he is not capable of reviving Arsenal. It is time for the club to begin the process of finding someone who can.
In Arsene Wenger’s final few years as Arsenal manager, it became hard to keep track of the number of matches that felt like a new nadir; a blow that couldn’t be recovered from. There were the multiple bloated defeats to big teams away from home, that cumulated in the 10-2 aggregate defeat to Bayern Munich, still Arsenal’s most recent participation in the Champions League. Then in the final couple of seasons there were several pathetic defeats away from home to mid-table and relegation battling teams. A 3-1 at West Brom in March 2017. A 3-0 at Palace a month later. A 2-1 and 3-1 at Bournemouth and Swansea in January 2018. The 2-1 in Brighton that March.
For some Arsenal’s defeat to Sheffield United on Monday will be that nadir with Unai Emery. For others it would’ve been the Europa League final against Chelsea, or perhaps the atrocious second half at Watford in September. And for some, that match will still be to come. For myself, however, things are a bit different. Throughout Emery’s tenure there hasn’t been a moment of breaking point, where it felt like time. Yet it is nonetheless just as clear as it was in March 2018, perhaps even more so, that Arsenal’s current manager is not the person to take the team forward in the foreseeable future.
Of course there have been some real low points. More problematic for Emery, however, is less the depths of the nadirs and more that, after 70 games in charge, it’s very hard to find any bright sparks or reasons for optimism when it comes to his management. For more than 14 months Arsenal have been consistently playing mediocre football under their current head coach. The particularly severe problems of the final two Wenger seasons - Arsenal’s defending and away performances - haven’t been improved in the slightest, and it’s come alongside a decline in their attacking cohesion and authority in possession.
In total Emery has had 47 Premier League games and if you were to count the number of genuinely convincing performances you’d struggle to reach double figures. There haven’t been any yet this season, and they were sparse enough last term. The wins at home against Tottenham and Chelsea were the clear highs and Arsenal were unlucky to only draw away at Tottenham in what was their most accomplished performance away to a big six team in years. A 1-1 draw vs Liverpool was a fine showing against a great team. There was a fantastic second half at home to Leicester and a great first half at home to Southampton. Fulham were twice dispatched, and Bournemouth were comfortably put away at home.
Arsenal’s other league wins have usually fallen into one of two categories. Either Arsenal struggle to control or breakdown a weak team and have to battle for a scrappy win - Huddersfield and Cardiff twice last season, Bournemouth and Aston Villa at home this season, among many examples. Or Arsenal have played their opponents about even, and have come out on top through being more clinical with their chances, rather than any dominance in general play - Everton, Watford and Manchester United at home last season were the clearest examples.
There have been some baffling tactical decisions, like going with a diamond at Anfield when Liverpool do so much of their attacking through their fullbacks. Emery has spoken about making Arsenal a chameleon team tactically, an idea that isn’t without its merits. In practice, however, it has been difficult to grasp the logic behind Emery’s chopping and changing. The number of half time substitutions (25 in the league) have added to the sense that Emery is fumbling in the dark for tactics and combinations that work, rather than executing them with a clear thought process.
For many, their biggest gripe with Emery is his loyalty to certain players, or his lack of trust in others. His unwillingness to use Torreira as a base midfielder, where he played for Sampdoria and still does for Uruguay, and his preference for the Xhaka and Guendouzi pivot instead, is just one example in this regard.
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In truth, these kind of complaints could go for a while, and everyone has their own; but these micro tactical and selection issues people have with Emery are minor compared to the major macro issues of his time at Arsenal so far.
There have essentially been three major failings of Emery as a coach in his tenure so far. The first of those has been his inability to build a coherent attack. Quickly after he took over it became apparent that Arsenal, either through deliberate design or simply an inability, weren’t sustaining pressure in the final third as much as they did under Wenger. For a while this was somewhat counter balanced by the fact Arsenal had slightly improved in their bringing the ball out from the back in a more structured and precise manner. [I wrote more last November about how Wenger wanted to get the ball up the pitch as quickly as possible, while Emery liked to focus on the earlier phases]. This meant the Gunners were able to score a few very well worked goals that started from the centre backs or goalkeeper. As time wore on, however, the attacking fluidity and final third combinations that were a constant trademark of the Wenger years continued to deteriorate. Having a better system to get the ball to the midfielders or fullbacks up the pitch is useless if you don’t know what to do with it in the final third.
This has been exasperated by the fact Emery hasn’t been able to implement many of his own attacking automatisms or player partnerships that influence how the team plays. In the early months there was more focus on fullback overlaps and cutbacks, and in the winter of last season Alex Iwobi built a partnership with Sead Kolasinac that bore some fruit until the former’s sale. Admittedly it’s early days, but there aren’t yet many signs of attacking combinations involving the new faces in Arsenal’s midfield and attack. Nicolas Pépé and Bukayo Saka have created chances for Aubameyang, which almost goes without saying, but it’s not clear which players are likely to find their runs, or play 1-2s with them. The returning fullbacks, Kieren Tierney and Hector Bellerin probably have the most potential to strike up partnerships with them, but given what we’ve seen of Emery’s Arsenal so far, it would be naive to genuinely expect it.
Of course Arsenal still score goals and are a better attacking team than they are a defensive one. But none of that is a surprise considering the attacking firepower they have. Arsenal’s four record signings are all attacking players in the current squad. Being able to score and outgun teams with their attack should be the bare minimum of the Gunners’ expectations.
Related to the inability to sustain attacks comes the second major failing of Emery’s reign; Arsenal simply don’t control or dominate games as much you’d expect when they play theoretically inferior opposition. Arsenal games tend to either be open and like basketball matches - end to end with each team taking it in turn to attack - or turgid affairs with few shots or quality attacking moves - Monday’s loss in Sheffield, a prime example of the latter. Arsenal don’t suffocate teams with dominate possession, nor do they press with much intensity to win the ball. It’s a bad combo. In his first press conference as manager, the Spaniard claimed he wanted Arsenal to be “protagonists in possession and the pressing” but this plainly hasn’t been carried out.
One attempt at measuring pressing is PPDA which divides the number of passes the opposition are able to make in their own half, by the number of defensive actions a team makes. Generally the lower the figure, the more successful a side was in disrupting their opponents possession through pressing, while a higher figure suggests a more passive approach. Last season in the Premier League Man City had the lowest figure, while Bournemouth had the highest. Rather than becoming more intense and coherent, Arsenal’s PPDA has slightly increased since Emery took over, which implies Arsenal are more content to allow opposition teams to keep the ball away from goal. The trend is moving further towards that as well, the away games to Liverpool and Watford this season represent two of the three highest PPDA figures for single Arsenal matches since 14/15 begun.
This goes with what The Athletic reported last month, with James McNicholas claiming that any focus on pressing in training didn’t last beyond the very early stages of Emery’s reign.
https://theathletic.com/1216532/2019/09/17/emery-is-unloved-and-under-threat-it-may-be-time-for-the-next-man/ (to sign up use theathletic.com/arsenalvision)
There are valid reasons to play a more passive defensive game, and to look to attack with speed rather than play keep ball when you get it. In fact, it seems likely that Emery came to this conclusion and believes it to be the best way for Arsenal to play. But to say Arsenal’s tactics haven’t worked would be an understatement. Since Emery took over Arsenal have faced 58 more shots than they’ve taken in league play. This is practically unheard of for top four contenders. For context, in the same period Man City, Liverpool and Chelsea have shot differentials of +570, +324 and +329 respectively, while Arsenal in 17/18 (just 38 games, not 47) had a positive differential of 172. While it’s true the quality of Arsenal’s shots taken are higher than the quality of shots they allow, it’s not by a significant enough margin to override such a terrible differential.
I slipped in a graphic earlier while talking about the attack under Emery. It showed the number of deep pass completions (defined as passes that end up fewer than 20 yards from goal) the Gunners have made on average in the last few Premier League seasons. Not surprisingly there’s a slump that occurs not long after Emery takes over. Arsenal simply complete fewer passes into the last part of the pitch now than they did at any point under Wenger in the last few seasons. The trend is also the opposite in defence. Arsenal are conceding more passes per match into deep zones than under Wenger. Quite simply, since Emery’s arrival, Arsenal fans have been seeing less action in the opposition box and more action in their own than they used to.
What makes things more frustrating is that the players Emery selects could feasibly be more suited to another style. Granit Xhaka is a flawed player, but he is not without his qualities. He is a well above average passer in possession, and can be a significant plus to a side playing a possession game, as he has been for Arsenal on occasions in the past. What he clearly lacks is the defensive intelligence and mobility to be a great screener of the back line out of possession. This makes Emery’s method of trying to see out games through control without the ball particularly bizarre. There’s ample evidence showing it doesn’t work and the players are ill-suited to it.
This is all connected to the third major problem under Emery; Arsenal’s continued defensive failings. People could look past less cohesion in attack, less dominance through possession, less aggressive pressing and more conservative team selections if it had helped to solve Arsenal’s three year defensive crisis. Indeed there are those that do defend Emery on the grounds that Wenger’s football and team selections were simply leaving the team too open. But defensively there hasn’t been any improvement since Emery took over.
In the wider media there’s a bit of a myth that Arsenal have always been a bad defensive team in the period since their last league title. But for years Arsenal had been exactly what you’d expect from the third or fourth best team in the league defensively. In 12/13 they conceded the second fewest goals in the league. In 13/14 they conceded 41, but 20 of those were in four games. In the 34 games that weren’t away to top five teams, they conceded only 21 goals, a stellar defensive performance. In 15/16 they had the lowest xG against in the Premier League, and would’ve competed harder for the title had Petr Cech not shown a surprising weakness to long shots at his near post that season.
Arsenal’s defence only became truly bad in 16/17, when Arsenal’s xG against was more than 13 goals higher than the previous season. A year later it was even worse, and Arsenal conceded 51 goals, a record for the club in the Premier League era. In Emery’s first season they repeated the trick, matching the 51 goals conceded of the previous season. This was despite Emery getting new signings in goal, at centre back, and in defensive midfield. Leno also did his job well, and was arguably one of Arsenal’s three outstanding players last season alongside the two strikers. Arsenal actually over performed their xG allowed by more than six goals while conceding 51. This season it’s not been better. If they continue to ship chances at their current rate, Arsenal are likely to end the season conceding 58 goals in the league. In short, the defence has deteriorated so much, that Arsenal are conceding chances at a rate of 25 goals a season more than they were just three and a half years ago.
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There are those that argue the task of replacing Wenger was never going to be a quick and easy task, and that with more time and investment, Emery could form Arsenal into a formidable side. While there is truth in the former statement, at this point there just isn’t sufficient reason to believe Arsenal will make any significant improvement as a result of Emery’s coaching. The returns of Bellerin and Tierney at fullback could feasibly help Arsenal in all aspects of play. Signing more good players in future transfer windows could help Arsenal get better results - though the results this season show even that is in doubt. But after two pre-seasons and over 15 months of training time to implement his vision and philosophy on the squad, what reason is there to think Emery will eventually coax more out of the players he has so far got little from?
One of the concerns that surrounded Emery before he took over was the type of clubs he’d had most success at. The easy joke, and an unfair one in truth, was that he was a Europa League specialist. The more nuanced criticism was that in his time at Valencia and Sevilla Emery’s success had come from achieving consistently solid results, never from elevating them to a level above their resources. Now obviously doing that is difficult and extremely rare even for good managers. It does, however, stand as a key point to differentiate Emery from someone like Jurgen Klopp - often cited by Arsenal fans as an example of what can happen when you give a manager time - who had a history of lifting a sleeping giant in Borussia Dortmund to title wins and a Champions League final.
If one were to be particularly harsh of Emery’s time at Arsenal - and it’s not particularly necessary to be so to make a case against him given the realities laid out so far - one could go as far as to suggest Arsenal’s best bits of performance since he took over have actually had the least to do with his coaching. In the early months of his reign, Arsenal usually had sluggish first halves, only to get the result when going more full throttle in the second half. At the time it felt like the players were having more success when throwing caution to the wind and letting their individual quality take over than when trying to implement Emery’s plan. Around March last season Emery went away from his favoured rigid double pivot and finally deployed Aaron Ramsey in a deeper position. Ramsey added vertically to the midfield and it resulted in one of Arsenal’s best runs of the season with wins over Manchester United and Napoli, until Ramsey’s hamstring injury contributed to the season being derailed. This season Arsenal’s best performances have all come with the second string lineups in the Europa League and League Cup, using players who have had fewer matches and training sessions with Emery than the first team regulars.
Now that is a harsh outlook, and is at best a possibility unlike the earlier criticisms which are all but factual. It does, however, support the idea that Arsenal’s squad isn’t terrible, and that it’s not unreasonable to think their league struggles are down to something other than player quality.
This season’s Europa League performances also bring relevance to the one shinning light for Arsenal football club at the moment. The Gunners have a stack of young players who have looked promising in the minutes given. This is actually a rare area Emery probably has to be given credit, given he could’ve quite easily opted for more experienced starters than the likes of Saka and Joe Willock, or at least fought harder to not lose either of Alex Iwobi and Henrikh Mkhitaryan from his squad. This shows that the long term future doesn’t have to be doom and gloom. It does, however, mean the next stage in Arsenal’s development is crucial. Which makes having a head coach that can maximise attackers and possibility elevate a team beyond the sum of its parts sooner rather than later even more of a priority.
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It should go without saying that none of this is a personal crusade against the man. Regardless of his time at Arsenal Emery has had a very successful managerial career. As Alex Kirkland said on a recent Arsecast, Emery would have no problem finding another job in La Liga and would even be one of the main candidates for next Spain manager. It’s entirely possible his problems at Arsenal have predominantly been an issue of communication. Or perhaps his footballing ideas just don’t gel with this crop of players.
For over 20 years Arsenal fans got to bask in a reality few fans do; one of managerial security. Now they are in the pack with the rest of the world, where managerial turnover is frequent. Many appointments don’t go the way they were initially hoped. Unai Emery’s at Arsenal is one such example. The reality of modern club setups is that they don’t have to be defined by the manager. Much of Arsenal’s backroom changes in the last two years has been for this exact reason, to hold some level of continuity at club level from one managerial appointment to the next.
During the international break David Ornstein confirmed that Arsenal have a clause in Unai Emery’s contract where they can get out of the third year without having to make a pay off. That they should do it if the time arrives is at this point a given. The Arsenal board have the next seven months to start preparing for that situation, and to ponder whether paying the moderate financial sum required to end his tenure before then is worth it. If it comes down to top four or no top four, and the huge financial benefits that come with it. Well, you do the maths.