Unai Emery was named Arsenal’s new head coach today, and he’ll work in the new executive structure with Raul Sanllehi, Sven Mislintat and Ivan Gazidis.
The 46 year old takes over from Arsene Wenger and his appointment has come out of the blue a little bit as his name was not mentioned until the last couple of days.
Stan Kroenke has had a bit to say about him, but for those unaware of who he is or what he’s done, here are some:
Unai Emery facts
Age: 46
Clubs played for: Real Sociedad, Toledo, Racing Ferrol, Leganes, Lorca Deportiva
Clubs managed: Lorca Deportiva (2004-2006) : Almeria (2006-2008) : Valencia (2008-2012) : Spartak Moscow (2012) : Sevilla (2013-2016) : PSG (2016-2018)
Honours: Europa League winners 2014, 2015, 2016 (Sevilla). Coupe de France 2017, 2018. Coupe de la Ligue 2017, 2018. Ligue 1, 2018.
Matches managed: 608
Wins: 328
Draws: 129
Losses: 151
Goals for: 1172
Goals against: 703
Games managed against Pep Guardiola: 10
Wins: 0
Games managed against Jose Mourinho: 5
Wins: 0
Excellent quotes about Mourinho: 1
“Mourinho’s stance is that of a crybaby. We have reasons to draw up a list with errors and to make a public complaint for every time we have been adversely affected, but we don’t.”
Arseblog News approval rating for that comment: 100%
Little known fact: He is from the small town of Hondarribia in the Basque region of Spain where they have their own language known as Euskera. The name ‘Emery’ actually means ‘Throbbing red cannon’, so it’s like he was always destined to join the Gunners.
Best anagram of his name: Ya, me urine!
He won three cups last year, sounds great.
Though I’ll settle for winning 2 next year when he is settling in.
My wife can’t decide if he’s hot or not – the photos swing between nerdy and swarthy
this is going to be a long 22 years
To be conservative how about we’ll just start with 2 years?
Great appointment, welcome Unai! I think he is exactly what we need: structured, demanding and with a history of success.
Agreed
Better than “ruin me, yea!”
I actually lolled. 10/10
lol for me too
Should we be worried about his head to head stats against Guardiola & Mourinho? Or will all that change at Arsenal?
i guess its a little hard to gauge his head to head against Mou and Pep, given that it was in spain against the behemoths called Real Madrid and Pep’s all conquering Barcelona and he was with Sevilla and Valencia, both of whom arent particularly wealthy nor had great teams.
so with arsenal’s resources and a much much better team, i sure hope that those numbers will turn around. 🙂 🙂
its wont be that different with arsenal too . city and united spend way too much for arsenal to dominate them. sure we can compete with them , and might even dominate against them a few times. but then they would throw even more money. it never ends.
Those stats will be from when Guardiola and Mourinho managed Barcelona and Real Madrid respectively, while Emery was managing much weaker Spanish teams. So I don’t think it’s particularly significant in terms of the head-to-head records as individuals.
Its not like Wenger’s record was much better anyway.
I wouldn’t worry – he was managing against them with Valencia who financially were crippled and squad wise had a huge gulf in quality, far bigger than us Vs Man City
Just want to add one PL and one CL to that next year.
Gonna be tough to win the CL next year…
Man City getting pretty close to behemoth-like…
Yet still crashed out of the CL to Liverpool. Man City are great – but their competition this year has been weak in the League. I don’t think they’re as invincible or god-like as they’ve been promoted. Best team in England this year? Undoubtedly. Guaranteed to be in a CL final and win the League again next year? I don’t think they have it wrapped up quite yet – although transfer season may make me eat my words.
All managers are expected to win from the word go.I expect him to discard Wengers obsessive passing and reluctance to shoot until the whites of the enemy goalie is seen.
I also expect him to add steel to the team and defence. Unfortunately the fm didn’t care for the defence and the gunners paid the price with humiliating losses.
Hopefully he will get the gunners going .One thing I am reasonably confident is he wont let the gunners concede 8 goals in a game.
‘ whites of the enemy goalie is seen.’ …lol
He has a bit of John Turturro about him…
Or is it just me?
“Nobody fucks with the jesus”
More like Matthew Mconaghey.
Alright alright alright.
I don’t know how many years I’ve been reading Arseblog but I still couldn’t stop myself from going to Google translate in the hope that his name really did mean “throbbing red cannon”.
Sometimes the gags are blatantly obvious (Ramsey and his Rhino clause). Other times you’re not quite sure – This is one of those other times…
It’s not fair that we cannot upvote comments like this. Any estimate for a fix, Blogs?
He said this: “Mourinho’s stance is that of a crybaby.”
I like him already.
Can’t wait to see the mind games between him and Mourinho
Caught Unai’s live press conference and his English really needs a lot of improvement. Made me wince quite a few times. Thankful he took questions in Spanish…
He will improve, as he’s signed a contract and he will work on delivering his best. He seems like that is what he will do.
He was very slow with picking up French and still spoke fairly poorly at the end. I guess some people just aren’t so good at languages? I hope he’ll work hard on it!
‘to explah-inn!’
Where’s the thumbs up/down function?
Hasn’t been working for a few days.
I hope it comes back soon. This gaff ain’t the same without it.
his full name being Unai Emery Etxegoien, shows that sven still has a tendency to bring in people with really hard to pronounce names. good thing we dont have to say that last name very often.
Loved his speech – he sounds like he is going to bite greyhairedtw*t in the throat and get a cup of tea.
Did anyone also feels the same as me?
That Unai Emery looks like Tom Hiddleston (Loki in Avengers)
Thumbs up to agree
Thumbs down to disagree
Taking the piss aren’t you ??
Your approval rate on Unai’s comment on Morinho was totally objective.
Out of curiosity, will he have a full time translator as he learns English? I understand that he’s an incredible polyglot (English will be his 4th language)…but wonder how things work as he gets up to speed.
I’m TEFL qualified. Can I teach him? Please?