Despite the manner in which Arsenal completely capitulated at the end of last season, Unai Emery appeared to have had the backing of many supporters at the start of this season. Notably from those who have been most vocal against Arsène Wenger at the back end of his tenure.
However, now it seems as if most have lost their patience.
The club has made a considerable investment in the squad over the summer and for a while there was genuine excitement going into season, putting on hold any threat of schism. On social-media the general mood was that in Raul Sanllehi Arsenal finally got their man, their Don, that will drag us into the 21st century after years of being “too stuck in our ways under the dinosaur”. Some fans even volunteered to go fetch the rock themselves of which to carve out a statue for the man.
The 2019/20 campaign started off well enough with back-to-back wins in our opening two league fixtures. Despite some fickle and largely uninspiring performances that ensued we were 3rd on the log after eight games, behind Liverpool and Manchester City, the Champions League and Premier League champions respectively, who are light-years ahead of other teams in the league.
We were ‘the best of the rest’ and to say “Arsenal is just one point off Man City”, one of the most talented teams in Europe, kept Emery in the good graces of those who chose to look beyond the obvious flaws in our play.
This past week though; the defeat at newly-promoted side Sheffield United, the narrow win over a far inferior Vitória Guimarães and the failure to see out a win against Crystal Palace after going two goals up appears to be the most damaging in Emery’s tenure. The proverbial straw that wrecked the camel’s back. It hypothesizes all the concerns there were about his management style;
• the lack of playing identity,
• the continued absence of Mesut Özil, despite the lack of creativity in our attack,
• lack of improvement in defense despite the summer signings, and
* the questionable starting line-ups, particularly in the midfield.
If you listen to any of Emery’s pressers, he always talk about the strength of the opposition and the importance to stop “their press”, it doesn’t matter whether they are top or at the bottom of the league standings, to him we are the underdogs. Which, of course, is a total contradiction of him supposedly being the “protagonist” he claimed to be.
If Arsenal have any hopes of a top-four finish, if Emery himself has any hopes of fulfilling Raul’s clear expectation, then we simply cannot plod along as we currently are. Not with Manchester United starting to show signs of life and neither Leicester nor Chelsea appearing to wane any time soon.
Nothing about him, even with only two wins in our last eight league games, gives me confidence that he has it in him to make the necessary adjustments.
Our next two league games are against Wolves and Leicester, unless our fortunes overturn and there’s drastic improvements in our performances, this next international break could be squeaky bum for the native from Hondarribia, España.
@LaboGoon
Positively Arsenal 
half time and we lead 3-2, lfc took the lead then we stormed to a 3-1 lead before lfc got a dodgy penalty for a clear dive by a 16 year old, they teach them young up at pool.
Ozil the stand out player so far, and Martinelli having a stormer too, Saka and others have had their moments too.
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do you think we are going for the Emery famous 5-4 victory?
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no hesitation from marriner strangely enough, AFC player would be booked
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niiiiiiiiiccccccccccceeee!
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King Mesut.
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CÖYG! need to keep our heads now.
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told ya. Thats utter bullshit. Emery hasnt got a clue.
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Bruce Rioja needs to leave the building
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get in ttttttttttthhhhhhhhheerrreee!
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well Mills its the 5-4 you asked for
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Edge of the seat stuff….
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LOL!
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ah for fucks sake, 5-5 in stoppage time
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fk it.
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If Guen misses his pen (assuming he takes one), then Emerys gonna get a load of stick.
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Bollocks….
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Stuffed now, we are surely the worst at saving penalties in football, despite the practice we are given
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gone to penalties
we’ve had 2 shots including Willocks wonder strike, after we took Ozil off in the 65th minute
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Martinez really should have saved that 5th LFC goal
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I hate penalties….
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Bellerin scores our first
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Milner scores
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Guendouzi scores 2-1
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we lose 5-4 on penalties, Ceballos the one who failed to score for us. LFC scored all 5 of theirs
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One day an Arsenal keeper will save a penalty, I will tell myself over and over.
Liverpool are lucky, and Emery , some of it is self inflicted, but Emery is a bad Jonah
Threw this one away
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Effing bollocks…I’m as grumpy as Blackburn George….and that dear Positivistas is damn grumpy
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Bugger. What a shame, amazing game except Ö coming off. Cocky Liverpool, but they only did it but the skin of the skin their teeth. Feel gutted for the lads. Grrr! Not sure we should have let the leads go, but we did. Oh well.
Night everyone.
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Shouldn’t lose so many leads, or that late in injury time.
Not sure what will happen first, Arsenal saving a penalty or Liverpool having just a little slice of misfortuneL nothing EVER seems to go wrong for them these days.
Some players emerge with credit, but ultimately, self inflicted bad luck.
Emery needs to sort things, an inability to hold onto a lead paramount
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Hopefully, Ozil came off over not being fully match fit, hasn’t played for a while, as we know.
In any semi sane world, he has done enough for us to see him at the weekend though
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To the tune of “Oh what a Night”. Once again we are failed by that damn blasted coward. 4 goals put us 4 times in the lead, two times we are 2 goals up, finally 5-4 and the fool makes like-for-like subs. Am sorry but he is done for me.
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Really fun game. Pity we lost but our young guns gave a really good account of themselves.
Saka was the weak link defensively for most of the second half and ultimately gave them their final equalizer.
Özil was class throughout with a performance that makes UE look more and more like a small-minded weakling.
Mesut made the game such a treat to behold. Arsenal playing the Arsenal way we love.
Oh well, kudos to Martinelli, Willock, Torreira, Hector and AMN. The future looks quite promising. Hopefully though without UE.
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3rd time this season we have failed to win a game when 2 goals up.
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Mandy, I fear you are right. He is a Jonah.
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11 shots for Arsenal in the 65 minutes with Ozil.
2 shots for Arsenal in the 30 minutes without Ozil.
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Liverpool have done that to us too many times, with their last gasp equalisers and winners.
I expected us to lose, but to have within our grasp and then to let it go makes it much much worse.
We can be proud of our youngsters, but we cannot defend to save our lives. 90 seconds away from a win and they still can’t concentrate.
Frankly, I would have preferred had we lost 4 0 to this.
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Emery’s after game comments, from football.london,
On the match
It was an amazing match, I enjoyed it.
But when two teams concede five goals you can’t always be happy but playing a game like that could be good.
On Ozil
He played very well. He used his skills to help the team and was always positive.
The substitution was decided before the match so he didn’t get tired.
Will Ozil be involved in the league?
Yes he could be.
On Bellerin and Torreira
Every player has the possibility to play.
Tonight is one step but really they played really well.
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Soft penalty for a dive got them some hope.
Not sure it would have any bearing on the final result but quite possible that it would.
Crazy game. Should have won it though.
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wallahi we’ve witnessed someone who is not football coach drop his best players whilst costing a football club tens of millions revenue.
Let us not be harsh on Jonah. Or the fishes.
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I fear we may be stuck inside the belly of of this beast Raul for a time yet.
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Raul, the schemer. Starting to wonder if he has got Emery developing some players, and clearing the decks of others for some big , grandiose signing from Rauls world this summer? And hopefully, not Jose, but perhaps another swarthy Latin type, sorry Freddie.
If Emery is just the coach doing what he’s told, he would be a very easy vehicle for this.
I am sure with what we see in games, and what the data crunchers are turning up behind the scenes, nobody at the club now believes Emery has a long term future, whatever they might say in public.
But, in fairness to Emery, for all the flaws, at least he went for it last night, as he sometimes does with the cup team, and yes, it helps when Ozil plays.
And Martinelli, in the right hands and a bit of luck, could be a special player
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What a mad mad game that was. The positives all seem to relate to entertainment of it and good showings for younger lads, plus the treat of seeing some of the real good stuff from Ozil.
The assist was absurd. My mind was thinking only of whether the angle was too tight to shoot or not. Would love to know how early he decided to do what he did. Basically meant difference between, I think, low probability chance to score and pretty much 100% goal if executed right. The earlier he saw it better chance of executing it and I bet he saw it early. Audacious. Genius
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You said it Rich, what a great moment that was, for me the finest moment yet this season? And the celebrations were great too. Our fans made a lot of noise last night and did some great support. Mesut , what a player to watch, his cool intelligence and vision and intuition.
What if Ö had stayed on…maybe no goal number five, as Guen made a slosh of it, and if he wasnt on Ö wouldnt have been there and someone better suited to clearing the ball might have made a better deal of things? However thats pure spec. as it all happened. Amazing game, once we went 2-1 up I thought it was ours.
At least the Ox showed some respect after his fantastic goal.
I still cant see why either Ö or the Tor were taken off, imagine taking off the midfield in the Wenger heydays? Them coming off didnt improve things.
Well on we go, to get sloshed by Wolves.
CÖYG!
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Thought experiment: take Emery out of equation (imagine us manager-less or something) and what one player in world football would most improve us as a team?
Ok, Messi excluded (even as thought experiment would be criminal not to pick him)
If it was sheer talent would be Mbappe, but if trying to think more of coherent team, probably Van Dijk. Kante tempting but probably wouldn’t improve as much.
Interesting thing for me is that even with Van Dijk it’s not so much completing some formula, more just having an excellent player in a key position. Brings me back to my sense we aren’t close to a really good formula, nor a particular way of playing.
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one player in world football would most improve us as a team? – De Jong the one that plays for Barca.
Personally as OZil showed yesterday not only are we missing a techinical genius that can operate in tight space and under a press but also his footballing IQ is very high. They are both generous footballers as in they want others to play and the make other look better. Since Carzola and Fab4 before him left we have missed that high IQ, generousity and technical ability in midfield. Rakatic is probably another that is similar. Also Modric but i like these kind of players in the engine room and sadly Arsenal lack that at this moment.
emery wanted Benega who is OK but not on the level as the above if you ask me.
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does anyone on here actually think Emery will start ozil v Wolves on Saturday, I’m not even sure he will be in the 18 man squad, let alone start.
I found not only the taking off of Ozil last night strange or even stupid, but also then taking off Torreira too compounded the problems.
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Ed-
no I dont think he will or if he does he will be dropped again for many games afterwards… and agree with the second part.
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what worried me Ed, is that we all knew the script and speculated on since Monday, and most of it played out at various moments.
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I know many of us want Emery gone, but there are worrying rumors that Joselite could be replaced by Jose, it seems he and his agent has been a guest of Raul’s 3 times at recent Arsenal games.
And the rumors have been met by many of the wecaredoyou idiots with glee, its as if anything Raul does gets a free pass from them. Sad times.
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a couple of thoughts on last nights game, the good the bad and the ugly
the good, well everyone saw that Ozil is far from finished at the top level, given a chance. He was by far the best player on the pitch. the assist for AMN goal was incredible.
Martinelli, wow, this lad is exciting, last time we had a young forward as good as this lad it was Anelka, yes he should have had a couple more goals, but he is scoring, good to great goals at that, and the most important thing, he is getting in good scoring positions.
The Joe Willock goal was fantastic, the lad did not have his best game, but that goal was something else.
the bad, Emery subs, once again made us worse. Last year Ramsey and ozil and to an extent Lacazette were coming on and saving his bacon. This year that is not happening, although Pepe did it last week for him. There is a problem when its taking individual brilliance so often for us to score.
Guendouzi was poor defensively once again, lacked awareness for thier 5th, as did AMN on the ox goal.
the ugly, Rob Holding had probably his poorest game for us, was off the pace all night long. Saka had an assist, and worked hard, but he is struggling at the moment, he looks a little short of confidence, lets hope his assist gives him a big boost as he is a big big talent.
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Great points Ed.( Goerge, that could be the match review?) I noticed the wecaremorethanmothercare gang were going for Mustafi, feel more and more sorry for the guy the more they ridicule him. Holding didnt help much in the build up to that goal and Mustafi beat himself up pretty badly for the mistake. Plus poor Rob, normally hes pretty brilliant and well up for it. Im sure he’ll bounce back. But Mustafi will be destroyed and booted out in the end. Shame, a real shame.
Sometimes when Im really bored I have al look around at old games, and the amount of mistake players made is pretty often. These days every player has to be Messi or bust.
I thought Martinez could have done a tad better with a least two of the goals-but again, what to do? These guys dont get much of a chance and all eyes are on them, eyes? more like the microscope!
Amazing goal from Willock ” hey Ox, anything you can do I can do better?”.
Really great game, but a bastard that we lost
Mesut: what a joy it is to watch that guy play football.
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