Unai Emery selects Mesut Ozil following intense pressure and STILL gets criticised.
No matter what Unai Emery does he is going to be criticised and that was no better illustrated than his decision to select Mesut Ozil against Wolves at the weekend.
A large section of the Arsenal fan base was calling for Ozil to be selected against Wolves but pundit Tony Cascariono branded it poor leadership.
Trying to appease the fans
‘It smacked of poor leadership,’ Cascarino told The Times as cited by the Metro. ‘If the Arsenal manager genuinely believed Ozil was the man to lift his faltering team, he would have used him more than twice in the Premier League this season.
‘Instead, his selection seemed motivated by a desire to appease the Arsenal fans. If Emery is to turn things around at the Emirates, he needs to do more than simply pick a fan favourite. ‘Arsenal are a side who will always offer an opening to their opponents. Wolves had 25 attempts to Arsenal’s ten on Saturday and it was only a matter of time before they equalised. ‘It was interesting hearing Emery say afterwards that his side had spurned the opportunity to score a second goal.
‘With this Arsenal team, there is no guarantee that going two goals ahead will put the game to bed. Emery’s priority must be to make this side more solid.’
I actually feel that Cascarino is right, I would never have picked Ozil and have said on many times. However, I accepted his decision and left it at that.
But it shows that whatever the Spaniard does he is going to be attacked by someone.
All managers, even Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp get criticised but generally speaking their decisions are accepted. That simply does not apply with Unai Emery.
Every decision he makes is heavily scrutinised. He is now at a stage that he will always be criticised, rightly or wrongly.
Once it gets like then it really does start to look like that the only way out is for him to depart.
Not because of comments from a low-level pundit but because it is symptomatic of what the 43-year-old is up against.
Emery gets criticized for how he is killing the style and philosophy of Arsenal that was 20 years in the making. What was needed was a coach to add directness and purpose to an attacking team, rather than the possession without purpose we were stuck in.
We needed someone who would pay attention to the defensive side of things and improve the defense, when it was too often ignored in the past.
Stand up – tell them the truth
We currently have a good crop of forwards and attacking midfielders, but my oh my our defence is pure rubbish. We need a coach who would consolidate our defence and the attack will look after itself.
Unai,s biggest mistakes were to freeze Ozil out,and persevere with Xhaka instead of Torrierra at cm
It’s not an unrecoverable situation even now.
But I fear his ideology of several captains and total revolving squads will be his downfall.
This league needs strong units and one captain.Continuation and confidence come from playing together.
Too many changes lead to confusion at vital moments,in front of goal at either end.
I could go on…………..
Well, maybe, just maybe, Özil was selected against Wolves to give him a last chance to prove himself to Emery and the fans. He didn’t do that at all imho. We’ll have to wait and see whether he gets picked again.
There is nobody in this team that can grab a game by the scruff of the neck. It’s time to play Chambers as DM to help kill opposition attacks and let ball players like Martinelli, Pepe, Ceballos and Auba loose. And anybody that passes the ball backwards from inside the opposition penalty area buys a round for the team.
I agree SAG.If Emery is not going to leave out the mediocre Socratis and Luis, surely be can shore up things defensively by using Chambers as a DM.
Exactly. Once Chambers protects CBs in a DM role, then team will get more overall balanc.
Or just play torreira where he should be playing?? None of this box to box, he holds, he tackles he plays forward quickly. Ozil was one of our better players at the weekend and showed hos class midweek, but I don’t expect him at the Emirates from January.
Arsenal kinda developed habit of acting like vulture. They got Ozil just bcoz he was available, while priority was other position. Similar with Sanchez. They got Emery when he was sacked. Now kovac is latest sacked material. So will arsenal snap him up too! Its understandable our team is performing like a sacked team.
There are enough players we didn’t do that with (Laca, Auba, Pepe, Cazorla, Tierney to name a few) that disproves your theory. What Arsenal is guilty of is never bothering to organize a half-decent defense. Seriously have to go back to Invincibles era to find it. We love to get great attackers and creative midfielders, and then scrounge around for scraps for a DM and CB. Not to mention the time we wasted paying Steve Bould to chew gum on a bench and look like a hard man.
As Durand mentioned above its
Emery’s inability to implement an
expansive, entertaining brand of
futbol that has turned the
majority of Arsenal fans against him.
Why would any manager with over $200M
of offensive firepower at his
disposal consistently resort to
employing conservative tactics that
allow the opposition to dictate the
the flow of the game? Arsenal simply
aren’t able too see out games atm,
and playing as if the back four will
somehow circumvent this reality is
borderline criminal negligence.
If Arsenal were scoring goals for fun
@ the Emirates and consistently
nicking results against teams there
SUPPOSED to beat do you honestly
think fans would be booing Xhaka off
the pitch and crucifying the Spaniard
on social media for freezing out
Ozil? The fans desperately want
Arsenal to compete for the EPL title
and qualify for Champions League but
perhaps more important than both
Gooners across the globe want to
be entertained by the type of futbol
that attracted most of us to the
club in the first place.
If Emery doesnt understand this
already than he will NEVER win over
the fans and has no future at our
beloved club.
To be fair even if he wanted to, which remains to be seen, how could he have so far with just Auba to rely on?
Laca injured, Pepe finding his way, youngsters cutting their teeth – kind of big obstacles to the attack.
Add in our weak defence still conceding goals even when we do set up defensively, just how well do you honestly think that attacking routine would have fared?
Not to say he can’t go more aggressive now, and he has slowly started playing more offensive since players have returned, but now he needs to properly take the hand break off and let our attack prove what they can do imo.
Why buy Pepe, when the urgent need was a top class CB and physically demanding CM?
Emery was a dead man walking from day one with many so called supporters, because he wasn’t Arsene Wenger.
Good luck to whoever takes over.
Ace you’re right that is exactly Emery’s problem. He is trying to reshape Arsenal into something fans don’t want.
They wanted a coach to fix our $hit defense while keeping the attack sharp; it’s not hard to understand.
Surely the board, management, and owner understand this? No need to reinvent the wheel FFS! Just fix the defense!
Emery is up against the fact he can’t coach and even if he could, can’t get his ideas across because no one understands a bloody word he says, apart from perhaps Ceballos, but he’s shit too. I’m sorry but I’ve had enough and now some are trying to defend him. He’s a busted flush.
I am not sure he is the man to take us forward, but he obviously can coach otherwise he wouldn’t have won the trophies he has, not talking psg obviously here as we would win those trophies! And Ceballos really isn’t shit as you put it. Enjoy your week bud, up the gooners.
The Ozil reference is clickbait. Unai has a problem cos of our goal conceded column. The man has no grasp of effective tactics for this league.
Mesut only became relevant cos Emery is ruining our season.
@ACE.
Excellent post,I think that you reflect the feeling of most Arsenal Fans.
Congratulations.
Arsenal Fans should already know this by now….
NO matter who the manager, our soccer isn’t gonna change because the manager bought average players in the midfield, and chose to sell all our technical players there.
If anyone still thinks that Guendouzi, Torreira, Xhaka are anywhere near good enough to be first teamers in our midfield, then he’s part of the problem.
People always reference Lampard that he’s performing wonders; but he’s not a great coach. Everything was set for him to succeed by Sarri. Sarri had already bought in Kovacic and Joginho who are the best midfielders in the league alongside Kante. That’s why they are playing well b’se they have a dominant midfield.