It is hard not to feel sorry for Unai Emery, he really has been handed a poisoned chalice at Arsenal, mainly because of the incompetence that preceded him.
The Spaniard has a limited budget and a team that that is structurally unsound and the only way he can rebuild is if he sells players but because of what has gone before even that is proving very difficult.
He cannot get rid of Mesut Ozil because of the high salary the German is on, the same probably applies to Henrikh Mkhitaryan and you can now add Shkodran Mustafi to that list.
Emery is keen on offloading the defender who has failed miserably at the Emirates but according to the latest report he is simply refusing to be sold.
He is on £120k a week and happy in London, he knows that it is very unlikely that any other club will pay him that sort of wage and so he is digging his heels in.
You cannot blame any of the players for this, they have to think of their own financial futures, it is not their fault that the previous management rolled over and agreed to such ridiculous wages.
So, what we have here is a club that desperately needs to sell it’s underperforming players, reduce the wage bill and top up the transfer kitty but is unable to sell those very same players because they are essentially refusing to go.
It is an utter mess and one that Emery has to now manage.
I don’t know what he can do under these circumstances and I fear that when the season kicks off the squad we have will not be any stronger than what we had last season, in fact, there is an argument that we will actually be weaker.