Peter Crouch has praised Aston Villa manager Unai Emery and claimed he was disrespected at Arsenal.
The Spaniard was Arsenal’s boss from the 2018/2019 season and was sacked at the end of 2019.
He had led Arsenal to the final of the Europa League in his first season as its manager and continued to work hard to get them back inside the top four.
However, when his team hit a poor run of form, he seemed to lose the support of the dressing room at the end of 2019, which forced the club to pull the trigger.
Emery bounced back as the manager of Villarreal and won the Europa League with them, beating Arsenal en route to the final.
He is now doing an amazing job back in England at the helm of Aston Villa and Crouch believes he was not respected enough at the Emirates.
The former Liverpool man said via The Daily Mail:
‘I only think there’s a lack of respect in this country. If you go to Spain or France you won’t find that level of disrespect.
‘That comes with the job at Arsenal, it was a difficult position for him, a difficult time and he became a figure of fun almost with some of the interviews and things like that.’
Just Arsenal Opinion
Emery has been a fine coach in Europe and he can argue that he did not do badly in charge of Arsenal and needed more time.
However, we have moved on and Mikel Arteta has been a fantastic replacement for him and could lead us to the Premier League title.
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he was disrespected AT Arsenal , not, by Arsenal”. This would include the media and other interesred constituencies, not necessarily Arsenal.
Unai Emery was disrespected in England with the small minded bigots mocking his lack of fluency in English and his mispronounciations. This from people who often are barely fluent or literate on their native tongue, let alone be able to speak a foreign language. I am also disgusted by people mocking people like Roy Hodgeson for having a speech impediment.
The biggest issues at Arsenal were being the first to follow Arsene Wenger on his departure and being engaged as “head coach”, without the full gamet of powers of manager, let alone the all compassing power that Arsene Wenger had, particularly relating to selection of players in the transfer market. Unai Emery was expected to coach the players there or brought into the Club with no say as to whether they suited his style of play, examples being he wanted Thomas Partey and Wilfred Saha and got neither.
In addition Emery was not supported by the Board in disciplining recalcitrant players, Mezut Ozil being a case in point. It should be noted that the Board learnt from this mistake, once Emery was gone and supported Mikel Arteta by appointing him “manager” and backing him considerably financially by bringing in Partey and disciplining players like Ozil and Aubameyang by moving them on at considerable loss monetarily to Arsenal FC.
One of the continued myths that is perpetuated in the media is that Unai Emery can’t manage mega egos of players at high profile clubs. PSG is cited as the main example, yet Emery has a higher win percentage and has won more trophies at PSG than any manager since Blanc (check the stats for PSG).
His record in the Europa League is second to none and even in the European Cup with PSG dodgy refereeing (how many penalties to the home side in the return leg?) in the Europian Cup beat him and PSG.
One can’t go back and say what would have happened if Emery had been retained, given the performance of Arsenal managed by Mikel Arteta this season with the patience and support given him by the Board over 3 seasons. However it is good to see Unai Emery continue to impress with his achievements at Villereal and now at Aston Villa. The difference he has made at Villa Park with only Morelas brought in since he replaced Gerrard, is amazing. It will be interesting to see what the future brings. The Villa fans are believers and behind him, something that did not happen completely at Arsenal.
Similarly, hopefully everyone is behind Mikel Arteta and Arsenal to try to win the EPL trophy against Manchester City. A points deduction for fragrant fair play infractions would put it beyond doubt.
I am sure you will remember that I was in favour of letting Emery go, ozziegunner and I stand by that view.
It was bad timing for him to come to Arsenal with such a poor grasp of English and to have to deal with several players who were overhyped and overpaid. Everything you wrote about his reputation came to nought due to the power exercised in the dressing room and the lack of support received. For me, he had to go but he has returned to English football better prepared and it shows.
The horrible name calling and disrespect followed the arrival of ‘Lego head’ and’Pep’s water boy’ too, as results were patchy so UE was not the only person who was disrespected
Emery probably didn’t know what he was in for when he joined us – he would have been aware that taking over from a legend like AW was going to be a big challenge, but it seemed that he had very little decision making power, and overall he suffered excessively from decisions made by others. I think this was the real ‘disrespect’ that came from arsenal – the higher ups signed a top level manager but seemingly believed they knew better than him, and treated him like that.
We can’t really know how well he’d have done had he received the kind of backing arteta has had, but one can only imagine significantly better – I struggle to believe he could have accomplished as much as arteta, but we can’t truly know, as I said.
In any case, it didn’t work out for him here, but he’s bouncing back from it admirably. Respect and best wishes to him.
Great post and totally as it is/was !!!!
👍👍