Unai Emery has started revealing what it was like for him as the Arsenal manager.
It was always going to happen that Unai Emery would come out and put the blame on his failings onto the players, but does any of his complaints have validity?
Emery has moaned about the attitude of some of the top players and the problems that he faced at the club including transfers and injuries.
The bottom line for me is that the buck stops with the manager. If the player’s attitude stunk or they failed to implement the manager’s instructions the fault remains with the manager.
Being a manager of a top team is a highly paid position and the reason for that is that they are expected to get the very best from the team, if they do not they get fired. It is not rocket science.
When managers lose the dressing room or the players lose respect for their boss then it is inevitable that the manager gets fired, this is how it works.
Mauricio Pocghettino got sacked for poor results which came on the back of him basically failing to motivate his players, Jose Mourinho has been sacked for the same reasons, the list is endless.
Are the Arsenal players egomaniacs? Yes, sone of them are. Did some of them let the manager down terribly? Yes, they did. Did some of them down tools and use Social media as a medium to attack Emery? They absolutely did.
But so what.
That is down to Emery, none of that would have happened if he had managed to control the dressing room, get the players respect, get them believing in his vision and philosophy.
Arsenal players are no different to players at other top clubs, highly paid cossetted players at clubs like Real Madrid, Barcelona, Napoli, PSG, Chelsea, Tottenham and Man Utd have all thrown their dummies out of the pram at one point or another and got their boss sacked, that is the nature of being a modern-day footballer manager.
So, Emery’s complaints do have some validity up to a point but at the end of the day, the Spaniard failed in his job, simply because he could not win the players over or get them to respect him.