A Little Patience for Emery’s Arsenal Will Go A Long Way
In the aftermath of the disastrous last season of Arsene Wenger, the appetite for change was substantial for Arsenal supporters. Through the summer as we were showered with behind the scenes videos and laughing, happy players, we looked with eagerness to the start of the season and the hope it would bring for a rejuvenated Arsenal. Then Sunday happened. . .
It’s been quite some time, since many would call Arsenal truly competitive for the title. We let it get away that year Leicester won it, but really pushing the leaders hasn’t been a staple of Arsenal since that glorious invincible year. It seems many had hoped that would instantly return in the aftermath of Wenger’s departure and Emery’s appointment.
But reality has a way of slamming you back to the ground and making you feel it. That’s exactly what happened when we faced off against City.
Prior to the match, I half-jokingly tweeted out asking how long it would take for certain sections of fans to lose their shit at the result. Well, it took maybe minutes, but the real idiocy came on Monday when not only fans, but former players and a rather rotund Manager decided to weigh in on the result.
In case you live under a rock or are avoiding social media (a smart move) in general, let us remind you of the more prominent over the top reactions to the first match:
Sam Allardyce speaking to Sports Breakfast on Talk Sport had this to say:
“We are getting obsessed with this stupid ‘let’s play out from the back, split the centre halves either side of the 18-yard box and go and play from there’… it’s utter rubbish to play like that all of the time.
He was also lambasting Emery’s decision to play that style against City.
But Allardyce wasn’t the only one. Tony Adams, Mr. Arsenal, who’s playing career is without reproach, but his coaching career has failed to equalize what he did as a player piled on. Again, he like Allardyce was talking to Talk Sport on Monday when he opined:
“I don’t know what he has been doing for the last five or six weeks,” Adams stated.
“I thought he got a lot of selections wrong. His three best players were his subs (Alexandre Lacazette, Stephan Lichtsteiner and Lucas Torreira). I don’t know why he didn’t start with them.”
“Arsenal fans up and down the country all want him to challenge for the title but at the moment we’re nowhere near.”
And then of course not to be outdone by either Sam or Tony, Paul Merson who again had a fantastic playing career but has used his tenure as a pundit to continually lambast Arsenal. His was the funniest and maybe the stupidest because it was just him regurgitating old clichés to Sky Sports.
“If you want to keep on coming along making money and finishing fifth or sixth, nothing has to change,” the former Arsenal midfielder told Sky Sports.
“But if you want to break in, get to that level, it’s going to need a better mentality of player; I don’t think the players are mentally strong enough.
And it wasn’t left to the usual ex-Arsenal pros. Steve McMahon criticized Arsenal further by saying:
“It’s very naive at the moment; you’ve got to put it into practice first,” McMahon said. “It’s the wrong time in the first game of the season, against Manchester City, the best team in the league.
The good thing about that though is that he was quickly challenged by Liam Rosenior who took a more practical thought process when assessing Emery and Arsenal.
“Emery has come in at Arsenal, and they’re trying to get in the top four, he’s trying to play the same way.
“He’s won titles with Sevilla, he’s won three Europa Leagues in a row, and I find it a bit disrespectful to have a go at him trying to build something in the same way Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola have in the past
“Sam Allardyce was having a go at a manager who’s just had his first game, playing against the best team in the league, trying to put a stamp on his philosophy into this club – let’s see how Arsenal do in six months in six months’ time, because I saw a lot of good in their play.
“Yes, they lost, yes Cech made mistakes playing out, but I saw them being able to press the ball because they were trying to rest in possession.”
Let’s get right to the point shall we, yes Arsenal were less then impressive in that match. And Liam is right, yes, we made mistakes but for the likes of Sam, Tony, Paul and others to have a go right out of the bat.
Look at the two teams from Sunday. Manchester City with their Oil Riches are starting their 3rd year under Pep. His style of play is now firmly ingrained in how the team plays. But it wasn’t always the case. His first season in the Premier League pundits openly questioned whether the “greatest league in the world” had finally tamed Pep.
Nothing could’ve been further from the truth. Pep had to have time to ingrain his style of play on his plays. He used the transfer windows to bring in his players and the following year went on to walk the league because the players were playing his way with consistency week in and week out.
Conversely, Arsenal are barely 3 months into the Emery era. There has been one transfer window and much of that was to begin the transition and maybe stabilize things a little.
There were indeed positive signs for Arsenal but taking on the best team in the league on the first day of the season was always going to be a difficult task for any team let alone one trying to reinvent itself.
Arsenal were pressing and, in some cases, pressing well. Their efforts likely would’ve paid off had we been more clinical in and around the 18. And yes, the playing out of the back was dangerous against Pep’s team. But it is a philosophy this manager wants his team to execute. If that’s how he wants to play it doesn’t matter who the opponent is, that’s what we’re going to see.
Yeah, sure maybe Cech isn’t great at it. But we don’t know what has caused him to opt for Cech over Leno right now. @Gunnerblog on the most recent Arsecast offered up that he had been hearing some scuttlebutt that Leno just wasn’t ready yet in the eyes of Emery.
James [@gunnerblog] said on arsecast that he heard whispers earlier in the week that Leno wasn’t in the greatest of forms in the training ground & people at the club were not totally convinced he is now ready to be #1. Podcast here.https://t.co/UAuaC85M6k
— Arsènic™ (@MrArsenicTM) August 13, 2018
Does that mean Leno is a bad buy? Maybe but I don’t think so, maybe he’s just not ready yet and they are getting him shape. Make no mistake at some point, likely by the turn of the year, Leno will be the regular number 1 for this team. But I digress.
The point is this, it was never going to happen right away. If you had an expectation of immediate end product then you were wishing for something that wasn’t realistic. If you wanted signs of improvement, then you got it.
And this is where I want to address what Merse and Adams had to say. Specifically, Merse’s lazy commentary.
Over the last 5-6 weeks Emery has been busy instilling his philosophy, his attitude and educating his players on how he wants them to play. Go back to Hector Bellerin’s comments on the difference between Wenger and Emery, where he talks about the team working to be more set up per game then under the freedom given by Wenger.
Oh, and lest Tony forgets, the main purpose of those 5-6 weeks is also about getting bloody fit for the slog they are embarking on for this season.
As for Merse’s mentality comment, I had to laugh. Its clear to me he didn’t really watch that match. For him to pull out that tired old cliché just shows you how all he wants to do is stick it deeper to his former club.
The fact is this, there was a notable difference in our attitude. Last year, when we went a goal down, heads hung, and players quit. Almost instantly in most cases. But not on Sunday. 1-nil down to the Champions of the League, we kept fighting and kept going and again had our technical work been better in the box, maybe it’s a different result, you never know but there was a definite fight to the team even until the last minute, which is new.
I am wary of anyone who wants to draw immediate conclusions. Even had we managed a win, I would’ve been like – hey hold on a second we need to be patient, albeit with a happy tone.
We are going to have periods of success where we think everything is better. We are going to make mistakes that cause us matches. Point is it’s a process.
The Philadelphia 76ers of the NBA, coined the phrase, Trust the Process. It was an attempt to let the fans know that they were working to get back to the pantheon of greatness in that league and sport.
Emery’s social media efforts, the club’s behind the scenes looks and Emery’s press comments are all designed to get us the fans to trust them, that are working on getting us back to our stature.
I am reminded of this quote, from Chris Heck of the 76ers front office
“You sell two things in sports — you sell hope, and you sell winning, and we had neither.”
Sure, we’ve had our fair share of FA Cups in the last few years but realistically hope and winning the big things have been shorn of the Arsenal fans for some time. Gazidis himself said in the last half of last year when the new office appointments were coming in that he saw it taking 12 -18 months for Arsenal to feel like we were back where we need to be.
You may not like the phrase Trust the Process or It’s a Process, but it is and Arsenal fans are going to have to discover a level of patience we’ve not had for a while. It’s a lot of work to turn the Titanic around from the iceberg and we’ve only just begun the turn.
I don’t think the Sixers will mind if we borrow #TrusttheProcess – because we should.
What do you think?
