Jamie Carragher: You can make an argument that Unai Emery is the third best manager in this Premier League. If you back over the last 12 months since he came in at Villa, if you are talking about Man Utd, Aston Villa are a better coached team than United. There is no doubt about that.
Thing is he seems excellent at the level he’s at but then when you want him to take the step to leading a champions league team pushing for titles he doesn’t quite have the skillset for it.
He’s seemingly quite happy moulding Villa into Sevilla 2.0 and I would imagine given the financial strength of teams above them most Villa fans will be more than happy with that.
If in 5 years they’re looking back and they’ve won the conference/Europa and had some high table finishes I think that would be pretty good for them.
It might be deeper than that. I’m not sure if Klopp or Pep could do with Villa what Emery can, either. They’re top level managers and can do wonders with a top level team, which is a rare and admirable skillset, but it might not translate to a challenger type situation.
I somewhere agree with you based on his history. But there is a part of me that thinks he may have just been unlucky.
He was at PSG which was a mess with players having more power than him. Then he went to Arsenal where he had to replace Wenger which is poisoned chalice. He also inherited a relatively poor squad which includes the Ozil situation. Then on top of that they weren’t giving him the players he wanted. He wanted Zaha, they bought Pepe etc
Yeh but they don’t need that from him yet, for what they’ll be wanting he’s about as good as there is. Europa League is probably his level. He won it 3 years in a row, which, considering that a win puts you in the champions league, and only an exit at the group stages of the champions league puts you back into the europa league, it isn’t the best stat in the world if you’re a team who wants to do well in the champions league, but for Villa right now, success in the europa league would be amazing.
A lot of people seem to think Managers are 1 size fits all, but there not.
Mid table is Emery’s playground. He’s great at taking a solid club and getting a bit extra out of them to push the top teams over the season, and do well in cups. However his time at arsenal and PSG show that he’s not able to have that same impact at a higher level.
To be clear, I know there were other issues not of his doing at Arsenal, and I’m sure his time at PSG had similar issues. However, I think successful managers at that level are able to impose their will on the club and team to get what they want, like Arteta has done. The fact that Emery was overshadowed by the other club issues shows that he’s not at that level.
You’re right, and honestly, there is nothing wrong with that. We are so caught up on “the best” when comparing others and not how individuals progress and their best self version. He has improved as a coach and Villa are lucky to have him. He is class.
What did he do wrong at PSG? Even at Arsenal arrived to a train wreck and did decently getting Arsenal to pretty much their 2nd European final ever and wasn’t particularly far from finishing in the top 4 either. He’s like Lukaku where the bad runs have come to characterise his career more than the great ones he’s won pretty much everywhere he’s gone, what more does he have to do
Has any manager really been successful at PSG though? I would say that’s the only club where he’s had a team capable of doing something in the champions league, more of a player problem imo.
It really his is introvert personality that makes him unable to coach diva players - but if you give him 11 dirk Kuyt, Camoranesi, ngolo Kante and antistar world class players, I don’t see why he could not replicate his success in PL or Champons league.
How? He did well even with big names, Aubameyang has pretty much been a flop everywhere he’s been since Emery who actually got a tune out of him, winning him a golden boot along the way.
Aubameyang was in no small part what made it a disaster. Just look at how long it took arteta to work his that out and bomb him out of the club. Probably the best thing he has done since there.
Some people have all the talent in the world but just don’t make a team work
Aubameyang dropped off hard after getting his contract renewal, but he was also fucking amazing for us and is a large part of the reason why we won the FA cup in Mikels first season
His “opportunities” at the highest level were PSG that just can’t accept any loss from the managers, even though their squad building is attrocious
And an Arsenal that was barely good enough to qualify for Europe and he took it all the way to the Europa League final, Arteta finished 8th twice while rebuilding that squad.
Revisionist take on that Arsenal squad - Ozil was still near the height of his powers when Emery took charge. He also couldn’t handle the divas of our dressing room of the time
We should have finished 4th that year - we absolutely fell apart at the end
I generally agree with you, but if you mention Arteta’s first 8th place finish in his first season as a head coach, it’s probably fair to mention that he took over the team when Arsenal was something like 11th-12th under Emery, and also managed to win an FA cup. So you could make an argument that Arteta’s first season was better than Emery’s second season, with the exact same squad.
There is a lot that went wrong while Emery was at Arsenal that he wasn’t responsible for, but he still wasn’t successful with that team at all.
Arteta won a trophy, Emery did not. Arsenal got worse under Emery during his time there, and played some of the least inspiring worst football I’ve seen from an Arsenal team and we had zero idea of the style he was trying to play.
Emery is a great coach, but for whatever reason it just didn’t work at Arsenal. I always laugh when outsiders try to tell Arsenal fans about Emery’s time in North London.
It has nothing to do with what was being built around. The football was absolute dire. Even in the season when he had a huge unbeaten run, the xG and underlying numbers were atrocious.
Emery also skated by his first 18 months at Arsenal over performing every metric available. He also came in and tried to change the identity of the entire club overnight, which he was never going to get full support for. Most fans saw a need for a change but not the entire loss of the identity of Arsenal.
I agree that Emery did not have the club backing him as much as Arteta, but he also did not shoulder as much responsibility as him. Emery was asked to coach the team and that was it, Arteta was asked to rebuild the club from the bottom up. It was also Arteta and Edu who convinced the owners that this needs to be done, whereas Emery was happy to work with what he was given and let the standards sink deeper and deeper.
Otherwise, Emery inherited a makeshift team that previously reached EL semi final and failed to qualify for CL. With that team supplied with new signings, he failed to qualify for CL and lost in the EL final. In the process, the team lost any resemblance of any kind of coherent style of play, and Emery completely lost his dressing room.
Arteta inherited a team from Emery completely devoid of confidence, in the bottom half of the table, with leaky defense, non existent midfield, and streaky attack. He immediately made the team play better and won the FA cup in the process. Then he started cleaning up the mess that he was given, he did make some mistakes which made the next couple of months challenging, but by the end of the 18 months period you mention the club was again on the upward trajectory as opposed to the end of Emery’s era when the club was nosediving fast.
Both Emery and Arteta were dealt a bad hand, but there is no question that Arteta was in the end the better fit and managed to ride it out.
Still, Emery is a very good coach, and he was not responsible for everything that went bad at Arsenal during that time. But let’s not pretend like he was performing miracles now that he’s doing well at a different club, he just wasn’t.
I would only blame arteta with one 8th place finish. We were dropping like a stone by the time he took over and inherited the mess from emery and Freddie. Stabilised us and we finished 8th and won fa cup. However, that 8th place finish is as much on emery and Freddie as it is arteta.
Arsenal were a point away from UCL places in Emery’s first full season and had it not been for auba missing a last minute penalty Vs spurs or emery doing galaxy brain and deciding to rest key players against Brighton and palace at home at the end of the season we would have made top 4. So the team wasn’t “barely good enough to qualify for Europe”.
However emery was a victim of inheriting a mess of Wenger’s final season, gazidis incompetence as a CEO and mislintats “diamond eye” for transfers which was basically ex Dortmund players.
However, he also wasn’t this amazing coach that’s gone under the radar, we held 4 in Baku to Chelsea under a manager who didn’t want to be there and who’s fans that didn’t want him there. He also decided to play a guy in goal who had already accepted a job at Chelsea for the next season. Bought Leno to replace cech cos he couldn’t play out the back and plays him in the biggest game of the season. We were conceding 20 shots on our goal every game, our CDM he bought was played as 10, the players forgot how to make simple and effective passes (freddies first coaching session involved him explaining simple passing to the players) and the football after the initial honeymoon period was boring (pass to kolasinac and get him to cut it back) even in Wenger’s worst years we’d play some decent football.
Villa have the third richest owners in the league mate, only behind two teams owned by literal countries. Villa and Newcastle aren’t a blip, it’s a changing of the guard.
Moyes is elite in the Europa League, 2 seasons in Europe, 2 finals. Emery had Villarreal playing in the UCL semi finals, he’s never had a season as bad as west ham had last season though. So far I’d say Moyes is as good in Europe as ten hag, while Emery is a level above.
Thing is he seems excellent at the level he’s at but then when you want him to take the step to leading a champions league team pushing for titles he doesn’t quite have the skillset for it.
He’s seemingly quite happy moulding Villa into Sevilla 2.0 and I would imagine given the financial strength of teams above them most Villa fans will be more than happy with that.
If in 5 years they’re looking back and they’ve won the conference/Europa and had some high table finishes I think that would be pretty good for them.
And Aston Villa have won the Europa League for the 15th Consecutive Season…
It might be deeper than that. I’m not sure if Klopp or Pep could do with Villa what Emery can, either. They’re top level managers and can do wonders with a top level team, which is a rare and admirable skillset, but it might not translate to a challenger type situation.
I somewhere agree with you based on his history. But there is a part of me that thinks he may have just been unlucky.
He was at PSG which was a mess with players having more power than him. Then he went to Arsenal where he had to replace Wenger which is poisoned chalice. He also inherited a relatively poor squad which includes the Ozil situation. Then on top of that they weren’t giving him the players he wanted. He wanted Zaha, they bought Pepe etc
So he might still be a top level coach
Lol a couple points difference w prime zaha and we make the champions league and the future looks soooo different for arsenal.
Emery is to be celebrated for bringing Saka and smith-Rowe through the academy and starting them at young ages as well.
All said though things happen for a reason and I think arsenal and emery have both found the ones they are meant for right now.
Yeh but they don’t need that from him yet, for what they’ll be wanting he’s about as good as there is. Europa League is probably his level. He won it 3 years in a row, which, considering that a win puts you in the champions league, and only an exit at the group stages of the champions league puts you back into the europa league, it isn’t the best stat in the world if you’re a team who wants to do well in the champions league, but for Villa right now, success in the europa league would be amazing.
Villa are the 4th richest team in the league Tbf
Exactly this.
A lot of people seem to think Managers are 1 size fits all, but there not.
Mid table is Emery’s playground. He’s great at taking a solid club and getting a bit extra out of them to push the top teams over the season, and do well in cups. However his time at arsenal and PSG show that he’s not able to have that same impact at a higher level.
To be clear, I know there were other issues not of his doing at Arsenal, and I’m sure his time at PSG had similar issues. However, I think successful managers at that level are able to impose their will on the club and team to get what they want, like Arteta has done. The fact that Emery was overshadowed by the other club issues shows that he’s not at that level.
You’re right, and honestly, there is nothing wrong with that. We are so caught up on “the best” when comparing others and not how individuals progress and their best self version. He has improved as a coach and Villa are lucky to have him. He is class.
What did he do wrong at PSG? Even at Arsenal arrived to a train wreck and did decently getting Arsenal to pretty much their 2nd European final ever and wasn’t particularly far from finishing in the top 4 either. He’s like Lukaku where the bad runs have come to characterise his career more than the great ones he’s won pretty much everywhere he’s gone, what more does he have to do
Has any manager really been successful at PSG though? I would say that’s the only club where he’s had a team capable of doing something in the champions league, more of a player problem imo.
His time at Arsenal they weren’t at that level.
It really his is introvert personality that makes him unable to coach diva players - but if you give him 11 dirk Kuyt, Camoranesi, ngolo Kante and antistar world class players, I don’t see why he could not replicate his success in PL or Champons league.
How? He did well even with big names, Aubameyang has pretty much been a flop everywhere he’s been since Emery who actually got a tune out of him, winning him a golden boot along the way.
He was fucking awful at Arsenal, Aubameyang saved him from being an absolute disaster
Aubameyang was in no small part what made it a disaster. Just look at how long it took arteta to work his that out and bomb him out of the club. Probably the best thing he has done since there.
Some people have all the talent in the world but just don’t make a team work
Aubameyang dropped off hard after getting his contract renewal, but he was also fucking amazing for us and is a large part of the reason why we won the FA cup in Mikels first season
Doesn’t he?
His “opportunities” at the highest level were PSG that just can’t accept any loss from the managers, even though their squad building is attrocious
And an Arsenal that was barely good enough to qualify for Europe and he took it all the way to the Europa League final, Arteta finished 8th twice while rebuilding that squad.
Revisionist take on that Arsenal squad - Ozil was still near the height of his powers when Emery took charge. He also couldn’t handle the divas of our dressing room of the time
We should have finished 4th that year - we absolutely fell apart at the end
And Arteta could handle them? All the problem players under Emery were shipped out under Arteta, they were lost causes.
Naw we didn’t deserve it. I get that the team bottled it but the underlying performances weren’t very good. Definitely not top four good.
I generally agree with you, but if you mention Arteta’s first 8th place finish in his first season as a head coach, it’s probably fair to mention that he took over the team when Arsenal was something like 11th-12th under Emery, and also managed to win an FA cup. So you could make an argument that Arteta’s first season was better than Emery’s second season, with the exact same squad.
There is a lot that went wrong while Emery was at Arsenal that he wasn’t responsible for, but he still wasn’t successful with that team at all.
Emery had a better first 18 months than Arteta, Emery just didn’t have the club built around what he was trying to do the same way Arteta has.
Arteta won a trophy, Emery did not. Arsenal got worse under Emery during his time there, and played some of the least inspiring worst football I’ve seen from an Arsenal team and we had zero idea of the style he was trying to play.
Emery is a great coach, but for whatever reason it just didn’t work at Arsenal. I always laugh when outsiders try to tell Arsenal fans about Emery’s time in North London.
It has nothing to do with what was being built around. The football was absolute dire. Even in the season when he had a huge unbeaten run, the xG and underlying numbers were atrocious.
We haven’t won anything since so that means he hasn’t lived up to his first months
🥱.
Emery also skated by his first 18 months at Arsenal over performing every metric available. He also came in and tried to change the identity of the entire club overnight, which he was never going to get full support for. Most fans saw a need for a change but not the entire loss of the identity of Arsenal.
When Emery first came in we were basically still Wenger’s team. As his influence grew our football got worse.
He’s just a Spanish David Moyes.
I agree that Emery did not have the club backing him as much as Arteta, but he also did not shoulder as much responsibility as him. Emery was asked to coach the team and that was it, Arteta was asked to rebuild the club from the bottom up. It was also Arteta and Edu who convinced the owners that this needs to be done, whereas Emery was happy to work with what he was given and let the standards sink deeper and deeper.
Otherwise, Emery inherited a makeshift team that previously reached EL semi final and failed to qualify for CL. With that team supplied with new signings, he failed to qualify for CL and lost in the EL final. In the process, the team lost any resemblance of any kind of coherent style of play, and Emery completely lost his dressing room.
Arteta inherited a team from Emery completely devoid of confidence, in the bottom half of the table, with leaky defense, non existent midfield, and streaky attack. He immediately made the team play better and won the FA cup in the process. Then he started cleaning up the mess that he was given, he did make some mistakes which made the next couple of months challenging, but by the end of the 18 months period you mention the club was again on the upward trajectory as opposed to the end of Emery’s era when the club was nosediving fast.
Both Emery and Arteta were dealt a bad hand, but there is no question that Arteta was in the end the better fit and managed to ride it out.
Still, Emery is a very good coach, and he was not responsible for everything that went bad at Arsenal during that time. But let’s not pretend like he was performing miracles now that he’s doing well at a different club, he just wasn’t.
I would only blame arteta with one 8th place finish. We were dropping like a stone by the time he took over and inherited the mess from emery and Freddie. Stabilised us and we finished 8th and won fa cup. However, that 8th place finish is as much on emery and Freddie as it is arteta. Arsenal were a point away from UCL places in Emery’s first full season and had it not been for auba missing a last minute penalty Vs spurs or emery doing galaxy brain and deciding to rest key players against Brighton and palace at home at the end of the season we would have made top 4. So the team wasn’t “barely good enough to qualify for Europe”.
However emery was a victim of inheriting a mess of Wenger’s final season, gazidis incompetence as a CEO and mislintats “diamond eye” for transfers which was basically ex Dortmund players.
However, he also wasn’t this amazing coach that’s gone under the radar, we held 4 in Baku to Chelsea under a manager who didn’t want to be there and who’s fans that didn’t want him there. He also decided to play a guy in goal who had already accepted a job at Chelsea for the next season. Bought Leno to replace cech cos he couldn’t play out the back and plays him in the biggest game of the season. We were conceding 20 shots on our goal every game, our CDM he bought was played as 10, the players forgot how to make simple and effective passes (freddies first coaching session involved him explaining simple passing to the players) and the football after the initial honeymoon period was boring (pass to kolasinac and get him to cut it back) even in Wenger’s worst years we’d play some decent football.
He did fail though. Doesn’t mean he won’t win next time, but he did fail.
Top 5 might be enough for UCL this season - he could very well have Villa in the Champions League next season
Yeah if I ran a club with a modest budget/ambitions, you can’t do better realistically than Emery. 4x UEL speaks for itself.
There are different spectrums tbh. Pep or Ancelloto might flop at something like Burnley job ie trying to survive relegation.
Villa have the third richest owners in the league mate, only behind two teams owned by literal countries. Villa and Newcastle aren’t a blip, it’s a changing of the guard.
To be fair, having rich owners only matters if they want to put the money in like city/Newcastle/chelsea.
FSG could stump up a damnsight more than they do but they just don’t want to.
Seems like Villa are somewhat sustainably run, even if they do have very wealthy backing.
He’s just David Moyes if he was elite at the Europa League
Moyes is elite in the Europa League, 2 seasons in Europe, 2 finals. Emery had Villarreal playing in the UCL semi finals, he’s never had a season as bad as west ham had last season though. So far I’d say Moyes is as good in Europe as ten hag, while Emery is a level above.