Arsenal had been slowly going downhill under Arsene Wenger and feebly dropped out of the Top Four and also had developed an awful record against our biggest rivals, so there were thousands of fans hoping for a change of management to galvanise our revival. That finally happened this summer with the arrival of Unai Emery and he immediately brought in five players in Leno, Torreira, Lichtsteiner, Sokratis and Guendouzi and introduced his new system of playing. Maybe he hasn’t quite got the team playing to his tune, but he is certainly trying to get things right.
In my opinion there is still a lot of rebuilding to come, especially in defence as I’m sure you will all agree, so I was drawn to this quote from Wenger who thinks that his old team is doing okay. He was quoted as saying on Bein: “I think Emery is doing an excellent job,’
“With the recruits he has brought in, it has brought a form of defensive stability and so I think everything is going well.
“The team is in good hands and I always said that. A lot of people thought when I left the club that the team would need to completely rebuild – I never thought that.
“I am very happy that these people have been proven wrong.”
But have they really been proven wrong? I don’t think they have. I think we are just at the beginning of our transition period and it will take at least a couple of seasons for Emery to make this team his own. There will be more new arrivals and more promotions from the youth system to come before we can really start competing at the top again.
I think it will be Wenger that is proven wrong in the end. If he really thought that the team didn’t need rebuilding then that must surely have been one of the reasons he had to go! What do you think?
Darren N