Unai Emery claims that he needed more time and had to deal with poor attitude from Arsenal stars.
Unai Emery has taken another swipe at Arsenal following his sacking by the Gunners last year and the Spaniard claims that he would have done a good job if he was given more time.
Arsenal sacked Emery after a poor run of result that saw them lose his last game 2-1 at home to Eintracht Frankfurt.
The Spaniard had struggled to motivate his stars to give him the level of performance that he needed to succeed and the club fired him after they realised that he probably had nothing else to offer.
In a number of interviews, Emery has discussed his sacking and in a recent interview, he claims that most of his Arsenal stars had a poor attitude and claimed he could have helped the club achieve its goals if he was given more time.
Emery told France Football: “Arsenal had been on a downward slope for two years when I joined them.
“We stopped the rot and took the club to the Europa League final and took fifth place in the Premier League.
“That season we had qualification for the Champions League in our own hands but it all went wrong.
“We lost our four captains (Laurent) Koscielny, (Petr) Cech, (Aaron) Ramsey and (Nacho) Monreal and we really missed them.
“Some of our top players didn’t have the right attitude and were asking for more than they were giving.
“I needed more time to manage to transform this club, into the new Arsenal I had been hoping to build.”
Emery may not have named the “top players” specifically but it is obvious who he is referring to. One just has to do a Google search for the senior Arsenal players that were posting up messages on social media and downing tools on the field of play.
The Spaniard is probably right about the top player’s attitude, you would have had to be blind not to see what was going on, however, the buck does stop with the manager, if he was unable to get them on side he has to shoulder a lot of that blame.