Is Emery key to Arsenal success? Or the players?

The Manager, tactics or Players, which is most important? Adewole

The Complexity of the modern football game.

The modern football game continues to evolve and as such become a complex game to read or analyse. Complexities ranging from technology, fitness, stats, analysis, and most importantly tactics, all of these things shape up to make the modern game so complex.

You cant talk about the game without mentioning the fans of course, as they are the bed rock of any successful and relevant sports not to mention football, which thrives so much on the passion of its supporters which in turn adds to the complexity of the game. For any successful team, the fans satisfaction must always be considered because without them, there is no show…

Thus, i have been asking myself, for a team to be successful, what is the most important factor?
The players, or the manager? If you want to consider the trend now, one would likely say the manager. Modern football with its do or die nature expects managers to become magicians, they have to always achieve certain targets in a particular period of time and failure to do that will cost their jobs, things like the quality of players, fitness of the players, competitiveness, team chemistry, spending power, to name a few does not really matter anymore. The manager is still expected to come up with some sort of “Almighty tactics” to always overcome the opponents.

For every failure on the pitch, the manager has to answer for while the players who are actually responsible for results receive little or no blame as the case may be. Add in fans opinions, “the omniscience” pundits, the “ever perfect” analysis of so called legends or ex-players and you will see how complex the modern game is.

To quote Le Prof…”Look, it is difficult to please everyone because everybody has an opinion”.
The ball boy, the mascots, the kits manager, the pundits, the fans, the “pitch” has an opinion on how the game should be played, on how the manager should have avoided that loss…the manager does one thing, everyone comes out to say “oh, he should have done it this way and vice versa.

A lot of things determine a manager’s success, ranging from the players,tactics and most importantly, TIME. The modern game does not really care about the long term, but the short term, the modern day fans want glory at all cost, not careful building and planning.

From an Arsenal point of view, it is evident that the appointment of Unai has lifted the spirits around our club, fans are united and looking forward to the new season with great excitement and EXPECTATIONS are soaring HIGHER everyday, which makes me fear for the new man. But amid all these, are the fans of the modern game ready to support the new man through thick and thin? Are they willing to give him enough TIME? Will they complain at the first sign of failure?

No matter how good Unai might be, he is not a magician and will need time to change the mentality of most of our players and this change can’t happen overnight. We could be lucky but if we are not, our duty as fans is to always be positive and show SUPPORT!

Lets us “bind” every spirit of the modern day fanatism and offer our undying support for the club we love. Maybe if time permits me some other day, we will discuss more on the Complexities of the Modern game as there are surely more factors to highlight. Right now, i already feel like a bore with my rantings…feel free to agree or disagree in the comments section.

Upwards and onwards

Goonerboy.