Gary Neville believes that Unai Emery will need a couple of transfer windows to get to a place where he doesn’t have to make so many in-game changes.
When Unai Emery arrived at Arsenal, everyone connected with the club was prepared to give him the time needed to overhaul the team and playing staff. Following on from a manager who had ruled the club totally for 20 years, we knew it wouldn’t be an easy task for the Spaniard.
Imagine our surprise, then, that he has led us to just two defeats all season and has the club on the longest unbeaten run across the top five leagues in Europe.
Gary Neville, who is one of the few pundits worth listening to, spoke about Emery on Monday Night Football, explaining what he thinks the head coach will be looking to do.
“The job that Unai Emery is doing, he’s getting absolutely the maximum out of this squad Neville said.
“There is no doubt about that but to pick up and transition so quickly from a long time serving manager like Arsene Wenger who will set a culture for everyone at that football club.
“It was an old-fashioned style of management where everyone at the football club would have hung onto Arsene Wenger’s every word.
“He had to come in and pick that up, not just the players by the way, the actual staff in the club, the chefs the people in the general office, everybody has got to get used to this new guy.
“So he’s got to pick that up.
“He’s been made to work hard, it’s not like he’s having it easy in matches.
“It’s every single game he’s got big decisions to make, he’s having to work hard in terms of substitutions.
“I think he’ll be thinking two or three transfer windows in, in two or three years time he won’t want to be as influential or as disruptive to the game as he’s having to be.
“He’s having to almost over-manage them at the moment. Having to make make shifts in the game (north London Derby), he changed system he went two up top, took people off and he’s having to do that game in, game out and you wonder how long he can keep on doing that before it starts to break.
“It almost feels like he’s managing them to the absolute maximum in every single minute of every single match and they’ve got game after game.
“He does need to be supported in the transfer window to get that squad where he needs it to be then he won’t have to make as many changes.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi8ZjokOLZg