Following the disappointing Europa League Final loss to Chelsea, manager Unai Emery was asked if missing out on a Champions League place would affect incoming business over the summer.
While the answer to that is obvious to every Arsenal fan in the world, Emery toed the party line by playing down its impact to his summer transfer window.
“Maybe, but I think we are a big team,” he said. “I think Arsenal is a big name in the world of football. A lot of players want to play here. We are in one process and we need, in this process, to be strong in our idea, to be strong in our way.
“I don’t know our targets for next year, but the club is working to improve and do everything in our way.”
Arsenal will be financially hampered in the transfer market without Champions League revenue though Emery hinted that the club might attempt an alternative solution – integrate more academy talent into the first team for the 2019/20 season.
“We have a lot of players who have the possibility to improve and grow up with us,” he continued.
“For example, we have given a lot of youngsters their first experience of a final. I am positive for our future, creating our way with young players who are getting better in our way.
Many fans have been clamouring for increased minutes for the likes of Joe Willock and Bukayo Saka. Perhaps investing in youth would be the smart way to go considering how many of the team’s experienced players have under-delivered in recent seasons.
Watch this space for more Arsenal transfer news during the summer.
Get rid and make money off koscielney and Montreal. How many more times – both played last night , last season against athletics Madrid, 6-0 lose at Stafford bridge , 5-1 v Liverpool , carping cup final loss v Birmingham ( koscielney) , take 5 million , 3 million .
They have played good games but , once first goal in. Replace with young and fast c back and left back who can play in a 433.
Willcocks yes, Rowe smith yes, Nelson yes
Monreal is leaving on a free & I would allow the same of Koscielny based on his service to us, personally I would keep Koscielny for another season, mainly just to help develop Holding, Chambers etc.
I’d be more inclined to sell Xhaka for £40-50m & get a true enforcer in the midfield as well as a proper centre back. Also LB is a necessity, man we are screwed.
sell koscienley , even if we only get 2million, Real Madrid said they will not give Ramos away for free to go China, so who do we think we are, we need every penny with stan in charge. brighton cb, Dunk – double his wages, he will come. crystal palace LB- Van Arnoild for example, i have generally been impressed with particularly when Big Stan was in charge, going forwards and defensivly. if someone would pay £40 million for xhaka sell, i know he is out of favour but i still think Elneny can tackle and pass simple. if he… Read more »
Well we aren’t real madrid
Who are we though…getting tricky to work out these days. The gunners or the ivory back scratchers…Ah football…you’ve really gone to $hit, sadly taking our Arsenal with you
Wtf, so 2 strikers and 8 defensive players lol
Better than 2 strikers and 7 defensive players, innit?
Think torreia, more of an alround player in midfield. Great assist pass to Alex L. Against Cardiff. And great creative goal against spurs.
Put it this way who would you fear more closing you down torrentia or ozil!
Kloop has Wiljinsldan, playing to press and he is a similar player style to Torreria. Which worked well against Barca.
I suppose do you class Kola And A.m.n. As pure defensive. They played more like wingers. That’s why hazard and Pedro had a easy second half.
With all due respect, I’m glad you aren’t in charge of transfers. You don’t let a player walk for free to go play elsewhere when he’s got a year left on his deal. I don’t care if it’s Tony freakin Adams. If Laurent wants to return to France then that team will have to meet our asking price. Did Laurent give up his pay due to his long term injury? Of course not. Its nothing personal, it’s business. We have sold bigger legends in the past. Some disn’t want to go. Its business. Its rutbless and ugly but it’s the… Read more »
We have an excellent left back in Tolaji Bola, who has played for England consistently at youth levels and has intermittently trained with the first team. I hope he gets the chance to prove himself. Hopefully he and Sead Kolasinac can push each other on to greater heights.
Should have started by integrating Nketiah a lot sooner and who knows, maybe would have made an impact in the business end of the season and last night too!!
But no, señor protagonist prefered subbing on kolasinac when chasing a game instead of trusting an actual striker!!!
He may be inexperimented but won’t get that experience sitting on the bench !
Kolasinac started the game.
Was not talking about this game only/specifically, but on the night’s example Eddie could have come on instead of Willock.
My point is Emery often brings on defensive players when chasing a game instead of playing the striker sitting on the bench! Be it this game or the ones before
I’m completely down for Project Youth 2.0. I think I’ve repeated it many times on this site.
My only concern is if Emery is ready for it. He doesn’t strike me as pro-youth (even with copious usage of Douzi), and I’m not sure if he wants or expects that. It seems he came for more short-term reasons (get into CL, rather than develop a new youth squad).
If that’s the case and he’s not keen on it, then he can step aside and let Freddie have it.
I’m all down for trying out the paces forwards to see if they can do better than what we’ve got but I don’t see the youth system fixing our defence.
Sako, nketiah, willock and the 2 guys on loan in the bundesliga could offer a lot going forwards but it won’t matter until we can defend properly.
Spot on sir! Freddie should be promoted to the first team coaching staff. If we’re going to promote young players from his set up into the first team then he can be the bridge. His assistant Ryan Garry who is the defensive coach and has helped our under 23s and 18s become far more solid compared with recent seasons should also be promoted. Daniel Ballard and Mark McGuiness have come on a bundle and Ballard recently credited both coaches but particularly Ryan Garry.
Then we can bring back Dennis Bergkamp to continue Ljungbergs sterling work in the u23s.
Realistically we’re probably headed for a first team squad of 14/15 players with the rest of the squad backed up by youngsters. Our self sustaining model can’t support a Man City style 24 player squad of first team quality game too players.
This summers going to see a lot more outgoing players than incoming
The wage bill is far too high for the quality of the squad. Remove cech, lichtsteiner, mustafi, Kos, monreal, rambo, wellbz, Jenkinson and it’ll free up minimum 700k a week probably a lot more considering bonuses etc. With the exception of Rambo all the rest are either past it or not good enough.
In a year’s time we lose Miki and sokratis from the wage bill to free up another 350k.
Add Ozil to that list, ASAP. I.d also be tempted to listen to offers for Auba. We.ll never get our 60M back but realistically this summer might be our last chance to get a decent fee for him. I.m underwhelmed by his performances too often to really feel he justifies his price
Auba does miss some sitters but him and Laca are about the only good things about our season. There is far more broken parts of our team to fix. Selling Auba is bonkers.
Would be happy to see the back of Ozil though
Apart from scoring goals, Auba doesnt do much else for our team. He never helps with build up play
Auba’s job is to score goals! He won the golden boot or didn’t you notice? You can’t have a great team without great strikers and that’s one of the only things this team has going for it! I believe we do have some great young players AMN (in his preferred position, not RB), Smith Rowe, Nelson, Holding, Willock, Amaechi, Eddie and Bielik are all worthy of a chance. The problem is how long Emery has got to win something. It’s difficult to take a chance on youth when you need results but our noisy neighbors have done well taking a… Read more »
31 goals and 7 assists for Auba, and 19 goals and 10 assists for Laca …
I would happily support project youth. I want to see players hungry for success, hungry for development, hungry to improve; not these wankers that are already earning a princely sum per week by just turning up and dont give a shit win lose or draw. Let’s trim the wage bill, get some freeloaders packing and promote half a dozen of our youngsters.
fun for a week or two, then wait for the boos to ring out when they inevitably wilt under the spotlight.
Our “stars” are already achieving that.
If people are booing then it’s the issue with the fans, with high expectations and impatience.
But yeah, considering the fans treatment of Iwobi, Bellerin in the past and even AMN last night, I’m not sure if Arsenal is the right kind of club with the right kind of fans to do that again. Which is ironic considering we were one of the best at it.
özil out!!!
What have we got to lose
I think project youth backed up with some actual money (unlike last time) has a real chance of success
People aren’t exactly patient with Iwob, Guendouzi and co though. It would only work on paper…
I for one could get behind giving our youth a chance. Our owner will never invest properly so add some experience to a young squad and who knows. Big thing though, we need to have a plan, spray and pray won’t cut it
Based on what we saw yesterday, I think it’s time to use youth players. Chris Willock’s substitution is an example. AMN and Iwobi have made an impact this season. SAR always intergrated youth players with senior players and that seemed to work. At this point, I think Arsenal (and its supporters) are willing to try anything to get results needed on the pitch. COYG
I’m all for giving the youngsters a chance but unless we put a solid defence behind them it won’t work. If we learnt anything from the last project youth then that was it.
Take the defence from the youth as well instead of buying(wasting money) on below par defenders. Of course if we are prepared to pay £40-50m on 2 good defenders, ok but….
When did Chris Willock re-join AFC?
“I don’t know our targets for next year” Wait, what?
This!
He’s head coach, not manager. He works with what they give him. And we don’t even have an idea who “they” will be as the Sven role doesn’t seem to be filled anytime soon. Worrying. Just worrying.
It seems our whole future hangs on Raul sanllehi. Well until edu arrives.
I’m not sure if I should see that as comforting or not.
*Edu that is.
I found this alarming as well!
I’m sure he’s discussed the type of players/positions he wants, and probably even discussed a few by name, but he doesn’t make the decisions on buying them.
“I think Arsenal is a big name in the world of football”.
Only in name now guys. Hunker down, it wont be pretty for a long while yet.
5th in the prem and the Europa league final is hardly Armageddon.
If we could just find a defence, a midfield and some wingers we have a pair of really good strikers.
We have a serviceable keeper too, so we only need like 8 top quality starters, right?
The end of the world as we know it. Its about performance, ideas, attractiveness profitability. Without CL football, with a weak showing in Baku and a team with 8 players who should go, we are now tasked with attracting quality players, who will cost us next to nothing and play with a quality that garners transfer bids that we can bat away and look to build a reputation of getting good money for our players, whilst solidifying ourselves as a CL/top 4 club. We also have to reset our wage structure, get rid of the equivalent of a bricked late… Read more »
For real, if anyone at the beginning of the season really expected us to get to EL final and 4th place, hell, even 5th place, they LIE.
Liverpool has Origi scoring braces against Barcelona in the CL semis and Senor protagonist can’t even give Nketiah minutes.
He isn’t going to give minutes to any youth player. Empty fucking words.
This is my concern with Emery. Outside of Douzi, he seems when it comes it, he’s very risk-averse with youth. We’ve been dying for a direct and pacey winger in so many games this season, you’d think we had an abundance of them (we have none, neither Iwobi or Mkhi are wingers), yet that need hasn’t led much to Saka being given more chances.
Instead he pushed for Denis Suarez.
Not impress with Douzi at all, he got far too many games for what he does. He should have gone on loan for 6 mths in PL or Championship to adjust to UK football and refs.
It was a problem Emery had at PSG, the ability to rotate and get the best out of a squad. He sets his opinion and shuts other players out. Moura was affected at P.S.G, Elneny and Nketiah are the main victims this season. Well he has only one more year.
Lucas was shit at PSG that’s why the club let him go for a loss, it’s such revisionism to act like it was Emery’s fault.
Origi is a 24 year old with over 150 league starts across the prem, bundesliga and ligue 1. He’s got 20+ international caps. Nketiah is an 18 year old developing in the youth system. It’s hardly a fair comparison.
Also Ainsley Maitland Niles would disagree that youngsters don’t get a chance.
AMN, Guendouzi, and who else? Or two youngsters are enough?
Rob Holding until he went down with an injury.
Add Smith Rowe, Willock got their chances. Holding, Bellerin and Iwobi improved, although Alex hit the wall in the second half of the season.
You know they signed Origi for £20m right? And he’s 24 years old, he’s not gonna sit on the bench all season. Nketiah just turned 20 and is behind Aubameyang and Lacazette, he’ll get his chance.
I think most of our needs at the attacking positions will need to be filled by the academy. Nelson, Smith-Rowe, Saka, Amaechi should all get their chance. They will make mistakes and that is fine – it’s not as if the veterans have done anything to acquit themselves with their decision-making. At least with the kids, they have the speed to recover and make things interesting for the other teams defenders. Teams have played very narrow against us and have zero respect for our pace – that changes if we play the youngsters. With the limited funds we do have,… Read more »
I want everything you’ve said to happen
We virtually have no left back. Monreal is fading and Kolasinac is not defensively astute.
All the more reason to promote Tolaji Bola from our academy. I believe he can mature into a stellar left back. His attributes are well suited to the dynamic and forward-looking kind of fullback that seems so sought after in the modern game.
If we sell xhaka we’d need to buy a new center midfielder. We need to sort out the defence as a priority. Let xhaka, torreira, guenduozi deal with the 2 cm spots.
We have Chambers and Bielik coming back, both versatile defenders who have excelled playing defensive midfield and transitioning the ball forward. And I think they are both better than Guendouzy and Torreira.
The quicker they get to playing week in week out will determine if they make the next step up as needed.
Just remembered the two summer windows when we first only bought Cech and than splash the money on xhaka, mustafi and perez… yup, we still feel the consequences… sick : (
It starts before then, replacing Lehman with Almunia, Lauren with Eboue, Gilberto with Denilson. Not buying Alonso so not to “Kill” Diaby. Replacing Campbell with Gallas etc etc etc.
This has been 15 years of eroding the quality of the club
TBF he did fix the eboue thing by getting sagna pretty quick.
He never fixed the Gallas thing though, nor the Dnilson or Diaby ones either.
We should try to get rid of everyone over the age of 25 with the exception of Leno, Auba, Laca, Sokratis, and Kos if he wants to stay. Then try to make some smart buys to shore up the defense and fill out the rest of the squad with youngster like Willock, Sako, Nketiah, Amechi, Nelson, Smith Rowe, etc. I could tolerate them making some mistakes, instead of watching the same thing over and over again like the last couple of season. I would much rather see if these young guys have what it takes and if they aren’t quite… Read more »
They are at the age where their quality and talent would mean we only have problems with the bigger teams.
We want to do things “our way”. How is that working out? We’re falling further and further behind City, Liverpool, and Spurds. United is not going to be dreadful forever, they have too much money. We may have Newcastle to contend with in a few years. We need to do things the right way. The Kroenkes should invest in the club or leave if they’re not up to it. No manager in the world will succeed here with the way the club is being run. Wenger wasn’t the problem, he covered the inadequacies of the ownership. Emery is going to… Read more »
The problem is the Kroenkes couldn’t care any less about what you think. This is a business and the cash flow is all that matters to them. We need to stop hoping that they will inject cash. The reality is that it will never happen.
Tell me, which top talent did Spurs heavily invest in? Kane? Academy. Alli? League 2 (or 1 even). Son? We turned him down for bigger more marquee targets. Rose? Academy. Sissoko? He wanted us, we turned him down for bigger, more marque signings. Toby? We were linked with him for many years, but never pulled the trigger. In that time we bought the likes of Gabriel and Mustafi for a combined total of almost £50M. What about Liverpool? They spent £70M on Alisson and VVD. That came from funds from buying Coutinho for £8.5M then selling him for £150M. They… Read more »
Yeah it’s more about buying good players rather than using a particular strategy.
I totally agree with your points but Danny Rose didn’t come from the Suds academy. The bought him from Leeds utd.
Yep, was going to say the same thing.
realistically of the players playing last night, only Torreira, Sokratis, Lacca & Aba should be counted on to start next year. Iwobi, Wilcox, Maitland-Niles & Gendouzi should all be solid squad players. Ozil seems to have made it pretty clear he won’t leave unless he finds the perfect situation so at this point just tell him last night was the last game he’ll play competitively for Arsenal again. If he wants to spend the end of his top flight career just training and collecting his checks – then so be it. Mustafi, Xhaka, Mik, Monreal, Kolasniac, Kos (this one’s painful)… Read more »
I think Xhaka and Kola could be squad options as well, though they’re also probably among our most sellable assets. Neither should be starting though.
Completely agree with this comment.
Bit harsh on xhaka I think.
Leno, bellerin, holding are the only defenders we should keep long term. Probably need sokratis and kola next year as well. Get rid of all the rest of the defenders.
Iwobi?
A lot of people on here seem to be pinning their hopes on our academy, but I’d be dead-set against Project Youth 2.0 if we haven’t learned the lessons from the first time we tried this. The lads will need real tactical guidance, and to actually play in their best positions. They’ll need to know that complacency isn’t acceptable, we have to be ruthless with them. And their involvement can’t be used as an excuse to not go into the transfer market if we can bring in real quality players. No more “But if I signed them, I would have… Read more »
Yes – the real problem with project youth was Wenger refused to bring in competition for fear of stunting the younger players. at some point the players need to face competition.
No, the real problem was that every time one of those players developed to be a leader on the pitch, he was sold, to pay for the stadium…
I still believe that if we were able to hold onto those players back then, we would have won something more, built something more. A winning team.
No, there was a letter on football365 this morning detailing just what a load of shit you’ve just written is. We had plenty of money, in fact we made record profits after paying for the stadium year on year it just wasn’t reinvested in the team.
We have been grossly mismanaged for the last 10-15 years, and the blame lies with the board of directors and Wenger!
@daniel – the players who left did so b/c they no longer believed in Wenger/project youth. Selling them wasn’t really our choice – they all made it clear they wanted to leave vs. us trying to fund the stadium.
Van Persie, Nasri, Fabregas, Hleb, etc.
There were many issue with Project Youth 1.0. One of which was we chose a “staggered” development approach. Basically we weren’t using Project Youth all the time. We would develop a player whilst another player is in his peak, and tell him it’s all good. Peak player knows by the time youth players are ready, he’ll be done, so leaves. We would then replace him with a younger youth, whilst the previous youth is now at his peak, leading to the same problem as before. If anything, it’s even more argument for us to do a concurrent Project Youth 2.0… Read more »
The problem the first time was many of the players weren’t good enough.
You can get away with mass youth projects in France and The Netherlands because the quality of the league is poor and they’re not physically demanding. This is not the case in England where you see the likes of a young Fabregas or Denilson just getting repeatedly brushed off the ball, we see it even now with maitland-Niles and Guendouzi.
While I think Wenger genuinely cared about their development (to a fault even), I also feel it was an excuse to not spend money when we really needed to. Partly because of the owners and partly because of Wenger’s insistence on doing things his way.
He took Abramovic and Chelsea’s spending very personally, it appeared to me that he was obsessed in showing everyone he could do it without money to the detriment of the club. Barely a day went by that he didn’t moan and complain and their financial doping.
Exactly this
I see your point, but the last time we tried this was still a better place to be than right now. Champions League status, beautiful football, and something for us to be proud of compared to our bigger spending rivals of the time. Sure, the defence was leaky, but it’s no different now with our experienced professionals. I really loved that 07/08 team. They tried, they failed: but it was a beautiful failure. This is just a directionless, mis-firing mess.
The way for young players to learn is to play in the Premier League every week. They will make mistakes but should, while still developing, learn from the mistakes. Playing someone who is 30, paid millions relying on their reputation, to stroll around like nothing matters in the world is complacency.
Unfortunately, it is deep routed in this club at the moment.
The 07/08 team was very talented tbf, just lacked depth and “a little bit mental strength”. They’d batter this current Arsenal side (which isn’t hard tbf, Leicester and Wolves managed it recently let alone Chelsea). But I don’t know if our current youngsters will have the same quality as Fabregas, RVP, Rosicky etc. I’d also say that the premier league is more competitive now then it was back then. Today there’s at least 6 teams regularly fighting for CL places, plus you’ve got ambitious Wolves and Everton sides not too far behind. Even Leicester look like they could be competitive… Read more »
Just because Wenger mishandled certain things about it (namely the culture), doesn’t mean its a flawed system. It’s worked with Liverpool, Spurs, Monaco and Ajax just to name a few squads of the recent years).
I’m not even cautious about a new Project Youth 2.0, only because I fear how the fans will treat them.
Do the fan’s who pay the world highest ticket prices not deserve better that the cheap option? This is why patience ran out the first time and that Wenger removed all the physical, experienced players and replaced them with light weights.
As Emery rightly points out, you can’t compete in England on talent alone, you need physicality and both Liverpool and Spurs have that in Van Dyke, Henderson, Alderweireld, Vertonghen etc etc, we didn’t and still don’t have players in that mould.
Your latter point has nothing to do with Project Youth. Some of our physical players right now are Holding and Iwobi, and I’m willing to bet the likes of Eddie, Beilik, Nelson and co can hold our own. In fact that’s one of the impressive things about this youth, and we can add youthful physicality to it. As for the ticket prices thing, what do you want? You want arsenal to spend millions? Well we don’t have it. That’s a fact, no amount of moaning is going to change that. You want Kroenke to invest or sell? He won’t, that’s… Read more »
Well we have to disagree, first of all Holding and Iwobi are 23 and are not youth players and certainly in Iwobi’s case is clearly not a top 4 player. Eddie has to get past the only real top quality players in our squad in Lacazette and Aubameyang and it’s the only area of the pitch that is actually functioning. Beilik has the size but making the step up from League 1 is a bit of an ask. Nelson didn’t impress me the season before last when he played a few matches and for me he would have had to… Read more »
Spurs I’ll give you, but calling Liverpool “Project Youth” is a bit of a stretch surely? They’ve spent and sold well but most of their best players didn’t come through the academy or at a young age. TAA, Robertson, Gomes I guess. You could argue buying, developing and then selling Coutinho, but that’s an isolated case. Most importantly for them, they’ve brought in real quality in VVD, Alisson, Salah, Fabinho etc. None of them were cheap. Monaco is more of a cautionary tale than anything considering they’ve finished the last season in 17th place after winning their league only a… Read more »
Who said Project Youth only entails academy? Neither Fabregas, Nasri, Adebayor, Hleb, Rosicky, Denilson, Diaby, Flamini, Sagna, etc. were from our academy. And Guendouzi and Torreira aren’t either. Youth is youth, we can buy youth to support our academy. Coutinho isn’t an isolated case, it’s part of their business model. Solanke is another. Salah cost the same price as Xhaka and Mustafi. If he goes, he’s going for £100M+, same too for Mane and Firminho. The model still stands. Monaco is cautionary but doesn’t invalidate the Youth Project. They simply sold their players and refused to re-invest it, unlike Liverpool… Read more »
I mean it really depends on your definition of young right? Salah came to Liverpool at 25 I think, and he’d already played over 100 games for Roma, Fiorentina and Chelsea at the highest level. I wouldn’t consider that to be a youth signing anymore than I’d consider Xhaka or Mustafi to be a youth signings. And I’m not quite sure how Liverpool got £19m for Solanke but fair enough. Selling our best players and refusing to re-invest is our MO and basically our unofficial motto during the Kronke era. It’s a huge part of why Project Youth 1.0 failed… Read more »
I’m pretty sure when Project Youth 1.0 started, Kroenke wasn’t even at the club. I think this is revisionism at play, because all the accounts is out there for all to see; we sold players to pay off the stadium debt. I can’t stand Kroenke for the life of me, but let’s not start changing history to claim he was the reason why we didn’t re-invest when PY1.0 was in motion before he was even the club. There is no reason why we can’t do what Spurs do (people seemingly pick holes at me using Liverpool as an example, but… Read more »
The revisionism is we sold players to pay off the stadium debt, this myth has been regularly debunked by analysing our accounts. Between 2008-2013 Arsenal made £289m profit AFTER paying off the stadium loan repayments. There was absolutely no reason that we didn’t invest in the squad other than we didn’t need to whilst we were riding the Champions League gravy train. It was just bad policy that left us venerable. The architect of the “socialist wage structure” is mainly to blame for this as it tied numerous players who weren’t good enough on wages they didn’t deserve and good… Read more »
Which project youth at Liverpool? Spurs have become very lucky where their youth players exceeded expectations and I think that’s exception than the rule. Ajax isn’t fair model only because they are the biggest clubs in the Netherlands. They have access to all the elite youth players in their country. I think PL is just to competitive to try that now compared to 5 years ago. Liverpool is back, Spurs are peaking, manU has unlimited funds and lives to spend, Chelsea and man city the same. The business model that kroenke wants to use makes sense to just become a… Read more »
“Spurs have become very lucky…” I wonder how many seasons must we keep telling ourselves this. It’s like the whole “Kane isn’t good, he’s just a jammy bastard” line that went on for how man years.] Guess it’s hard to just accept Spurs have a better strategy than us, instead just claiming it’s “luck” even though they’ve been better than us and keep improving year on year whilst spending less than us. And who said we have to keep them long enough to win trophies? The purpose of the model isn’t always that way. I AMN doesn’t become world class,… Read more »
All for investing in youth, still want the majority of the current bunch to leave, senior team that is, no faith in them at all, some one will say that we should keep them to compliment the younger bunch, but I wouldn’t let our “senior players” near the current crop, awful examples. gutless cowards.
You’re running out of time mate. You just have another year to explain your ideas and be strong in your way! Disappointing season. You failed to deliver. Will you rise like a phoenix or crumble like a Moyes?
Worrying if the guy meant to be the manager doesn’t know what the targets are for next season.
The only positive is the suggestion of bringing in the young blood but if you do that send them out on the pitch don’t just sit them on a bench to watch Ozil, Xhaka, et al do bugger all for 90 minutes!
He’s not meant to be the manager, he’s meant to be the Head Coach.
Just corporate semantics.
He picks the players and sets the tactics so he manages the team.
If he doesn’t know what the team are trying to achieve how is he going to guide them?
I fear Newcastle are going to catch up with us thanks to their potential new owners and ours. And I’ll stop bragging about The Arsenal.
I don’t trust anything Emery or the board does will work. I hope not.
With all due respect if Iwobi and Maitland-Niles are the standard of players we are producing I expect us to fall further down the league next season if that’s the route we’re going to take.
We need a serious improvement of quality and i can’t see that coming from the U23’s.
And yet Iwobi in his short time did more than what £350k Ozil did. And AMN, bad as he was 2nd half, was still better than Kola.
And if the standard of our academy is guys like Bellerin, well what’s the problem? I’m happy with more Bellerins. Do you want more £40M Mustafis?
And yet over 150 games he’s been on average terrible, being better than that waste of space Ozil is neither here not there. All of Chelsea’s goals came down Maitland-Niles side, none down Kolasinac’s. The first he didn’t press the crosser, the second he gave the ball away and they exploited the space he left, the third he gave away the penalty getting caught on the wrong side of the ball, the forth was another cross from the left, maybe you want to revise who had the terrible game? I understand people want our academy players to succeed but lets… Read more »
This is true. Like AMN and AI hustle but they aren’t quality. They are squad players at best. ESR, Nelson, EN, KB, etc etc need to prove themselves still. All of them if they were integrated into the squad would be 2nd team at best. That doesn’t solve our 1st team problems. Without a concrete formation being used how do buy players to fit your system. Today’s players are more specialized than before. Kola can’t play fb but is decent wb, what do you buy Competition a wb or fb? Do you buy expensive wingers if half the time you… Read more »
With limited funds you cannot solve the 1st team problems either.
We all agree that a cull is required to cut expenditure and try and improve quality but the reality is the other teams in the top 6 we are trying to compete against have bottomless funds with perhaps the exception of Spuds who have been extremely lucky with their current squad.
It’s pretty clear to see what are the players in his words. Players that need to improve: Guendouzi, Torreira, Holding, Niles, Mavropanos, Iwobi, Chambers maybe (if he stays). And young players that he mentions: Nketiah, Nelson, Saka, Willock, ESR… So that will be the target next season with maybe two signings. Remains to hope that Auba and Laca stay and the rest is hoping for the mentioned players improvement. I’ve said many times, if Emery stays he’ll need 2-3 seasons to make his print. We can all draw conclusions and predictions based on this but, that is it, more or… Read more »
Pochettino made his print in 1 season at Spurs. With a terrible squad. Remind me why Emery needs 3 seasons again?
No he didn’t.
His first (2014) year he ended up in 5th – behind Arsenal.
Second year (2015) he ended up 3rd – behind Arsenal.
Third year (2016) he ended up 2nd – besting Arsenal for the first time in decades.
He’s won absolutely nothing. Ever.
Poch. They really only started playing better football (if we must admit that) in his second/third.
Selective memories, eh?
Thanks, Homer.
I don’t want to stay short on this but seems like you don’t see the general picture Jai. 1. I think that whoever coach that we can grab and put on Emery’s place wont make any difference. The comfort level that Arsene built is a questionable thing. And how on earth do you think you will overachieve a situation that was permanent for over a decade? Wasn’t Emery the one that at the start of the season made a 20 games unbeaten run? Isn’t that an immediate print? Then, he lost some players on a long term injuries (that I… Read more »
Sell everyone except kos, papa, torreira, leno, laca and auba and just play them kids. At least they should have more hunger than this bunch…I’d rather be excited about the development of the kids than disappointed about our senior players being toothless and clueless…also, emery should either be braver (play attacking football, you should when you have auba and laca) instead of that shy football he have showed us before
Players I’d like to have in the squad next season: Leno, Mavropanos, Holding, Chambers, Bielik, Medley, Bellerin, Maitland-Niles, Torreira, Guendouzi, Smith-Rowe, Nelson, Willock, Iwobi, Nketiah, Saka, Aubameyang, Lacazette Cut the wage bill as much as possible, give the youth a chance, sell 1-2 of them if they develop dramatically and can generate funds and then rebuild over the next 3-5 seasons. It’s the only way that can bring us back, with a bit of luck. With top earners that perform like they did yesterday on a regular basis and with wages that makes it impossible for us to improve the… Read more »
Nelson, Nketiah, Willock, Beilik, Smith-Rowe, AMN, Medley, Chambers, Holding, Amaechi, Martinez to Return or get promoted for no money! – Mustafi, Ozil, Elneny, Jenkison, Kos, Monreal, Chech, Ramsey, Welbeck, Asano, Ospina, Lichsteiner all to go. Free up the wage bill and maybe get some transfer values in and buy a few experienced players to augment the youth, plus a couple of exciting prospects like Martinelli etc and I could certainly get behind that project. Obviously there is no way that will happen but I can dream can’t I?
We have an older squad built now by our standards. And that’s part of the problem with our transfer losses as well. A bunch of the players we’ve acquired for a high price in recent seasons are or will be past it when they move on, or are waiting out a Bosman for their last big payoff (Ramsey, Welbeck). I would have liked to see some more of the youth, but I can’t blame Emery for taking what is normally the logical tack at trying to get us into the top 4 and a Europa trophy by taking fewer chances.… Read more »
People tend to over react and get too emotional. We need to intergrate the team with youth proportionately. As much as people wanted Wenger out with this “anything is better than Arsene, can’t do much worse” attitude, they are now not thinking and believe we should just count on youth. Much of this is unfounded and yes we could get a lot worse from where we are now. The likes of Mavropanos clamoured by some as better than say (Mustafi) were half baked at best an positionally still very raw. Whilst Willock certainly did no shame to himself, we have… Read more »
There is not going to be much new money to spend since we didn’t make champions league, but what does that matter with some of the players we’ve wasted so much money on of late like Mustafi, Xhaka, Perez, Chambers (who can never seem to not be loaned out), etc.. The big name players aren’t going to want to come to Arsenal and this year showed that we need to get younger (esp on defense). Biggest thing that will help this Summer is to offload so many of the overpaid, underachieving players to open up playing time for the young… Read more »
Hasn’t Emery said that the reason he likes it at Arsenal is because there’s no pressure?
We’ll waste another season when the mistake we made last May should be rectified now. We went with boring and bland, and that’s what this season has served up. More of the same unless the cunts managing this club wake up
He’s our Bruce Rioch, except Bruce improved Arsenal immeasurably and laid the foundations for Wenger.
End this nonsense.
Didn’t Bruce sign Bergkamp, nuff said. All the top teams in Italy (even the ones in Champs league) are looking for new coaches. But nobody is talking about Emery being binned? Does anyone feel confident he can be successful with ‘Project youth’?
So have we become a Southampton type club now? We will just rely on a youth team setup and then have to sell when they hit it big? Mildly depressing thought
Still feels better than Ajax who sell players that usually end up in the top 10 players in the world. I would be endlessly disappointed having to see the likes of Bergkamp, Suarez and Ibra leave every season. And more recently de Jong and de Ligt.
For some reason i dont think we wanted to win that final. I could just hear Kronke:
“What, more money for transfers? you won a cup god dammit, what more do you want?”
I remember when this board once had sensible discussion. Damn.