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Unai Emery

Joestlaachmkr

Active Member
I was never a fan of Emery, he was just not a great fit for the club. However, i do think we can all agree now that he probably should have gotten a bit more time, considering all the patience Mikel ****ing Arteta has got.
 

GoonerJeeves

Established Member
Trusted ⭐

Country: Norway
I was never a fan of Emery, he was just not a great fit for the club. However, i do think we can all agree now that he probably should have gotten a bit more time, considering all the patience Mikel ****ing Arteta has got.
He had lost the dressing room. The players were laughing at him and there was no coming back from that. I think things could have been different had he not had the communication issues.

The club has backed Arteta, and he has gotten time. The results have not been delivered.
 

Joestlaachmkr

Active Member
He had lost the dressing room. The players were laughing at him and there was no coming back from that. I think things could have been different had he not had the communication issues.

The club has backed Arteta, and he has gotten time. The results have not been delivered.
He had lost the dressing room. The players were laughing at him and there was no coming back from that. I think things could have been different had he not had the communication issues.

The club has backed Arteta, and he has gotten time. The results have not been delivered.
True. But i have also heard/read reports which says that Emery did not lose the dressing room, but he always issues with some of the senior players in our squad - particularly with Özil & Auba. I don’t know what to believe.

Anyway, i said from day 1 that Emery was the wrong man for the job. But i do agree that the communication problems was Emery’s biggest issue here in England.

Arteta has been given a whole lot more patience than what he actually deserves. And with that in mind, i think it’s fair to say that Emery should perhaps have got a little bit more time.

EDIT: Sorry, but i don’t know how i managed to quote your post twice.
 

Macho

In search of Pure Profit 💸
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Country: England
Emery didn’t get the support. Arteta did and he still flopped.

From all accounts Arteta doesn’t have a locker room at all, sounds like an asylum atm. Willian left 20 mil on the table and AMN publicly begging to leave - this didn’t even happen under Emery.

We are just waiting around because this is what we do.
 

Riou

In The Winchester, Waiting For This To Blow Over

Country: Northern Ireland

Player:Gabriel
Don Emery throwing shade at this awful fan base, least that's cheered me up after last night's horror show!
 

UpTheGunnerz

Vrei sa pleci dar una una iei

Player:Elneny
I absolutely unconditionally adore this man. It didnt work out but i have nothing but love for this absolute gentleman of the game. Probably the highest IQ of all the managers in history of management as well, thats the vibe i get from him. The kind of guy that lectures his lovers about advanced statistics as pillow talk.

Its Unai, Una
 

Macho

In search of Pure Profit 💸
Dusted 🔻

Country: England
Emery didn’t get the support. Arteta did and he still flopped.

From all accounts Arteta doesn’t have a locker room at all, sounds like an asylum atm. Willian left 20 mil on the table and AMN publicly begging to leave - this didn’t even happen under Emery.

We are just waiting around because this is what we do.
RT.
 
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Reactions: A_G

Macho

In search of Pure Profit 💸
Dusted 🔻

Country: England
Dermot Corrigan

“The Newcastle project is an attractive project — something to build, different to Arsenal,” Unai Emery tells The Athletic. “With Arsenal, you first had to knock down the walls, which is hard work, then start to build again. Newcastle, no; it was just about building from the ground up. So it is different, and I liked the idea. But I was also grateful to Villarreal for the opportunity they gave me, and we were in the Champions League.”

The Villarreal coach is speaking before their Champions League quarter-final first leg tomorrow (Wednesday) at home to Bayern Munich, and talking of the difficult decision he made last November to reject a lucrative offer from Newcastle United and their new Saudi owners.
Choosing to stay at the Spanish club has not worked out badly.

Villarreal came through a tricky Champions League group also including Manchester United and Atalanta, then stunned nine-time finalists Juventus 4-1 on aggregate in the last 16.
Now Emery is facing the first-ever Champions League quarter-final of his managerial career covering 18 seasons, eight clubs, four countries and 11 trophies — including a record four Europa League final wins.
There is one competition he has yet to really succeed in though, and the 50-year-old has no qualms about sharing the personal dream that still drives him on.
“When I began as a coach in the Segunda Division, I dreamed of making the Primera Division,” he says. “I achieved that. When I was at Valencia, I dreamed of playing in the Champions League. When I was at Sevilla, I dreamed of the Europa League and we won that.”
“In Paris, I dreamed of winning the Champions League, but we didn’t win that. When I was at Arsenal, I dreamed of winning a trophy, and we played the (Europa League) final against Chelsea. With Villarreal, I dreamed of winning a trophy, and we did it (last season’s Europa League).
“And I still dream of winning the Champions League. That is my dream, one day, to win the Champions League.”


It was that ambition that made Emery think very carefully in early November when Newcastle’s super-rich new Saudi owners offered him the chance to oversee the building of their project.
“The Premier League is an attractive league for all us coaches,” Emery says. “So when Newcastle called me, I thought a lot about the opportunity to return to England, to a serious project. For me, it was a source of pride, satisfaction — and I appreciated it. The opportunity of a club like Newcastle, what it could turn out to be, it is normal to listen to the offer, to consider it.”

Awkwardly for Emery, that thinking had to be done just as Villarreal, with four points from the first three group games, faced a crucial must-win Champions League match at home to Young Boys. After they won it, 2-0, there was a very uncomfortable interview on Spanish TV in which he gave the impression that he might well have been about to leave.

“I thought about the offer and I spoke with (Villarreal president) Fernando Roig,” Emery explains now. “But I also had to take into account that we were in the Champions League with Villarreal, mid-season. In the end, with a lot of respect for Villarreal, and a lot of respect for Newcastle, I decided to stay here. I am happy and we are doing an important job.”

(Photo by Alejandro Rios/DeFodi Images via Getty Images)


Unai Emery is unveiled as Villarreal manager by president Fernando Roig two years ago (Photo: Jose Miguel Fernandez/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The Athletic reported at the time that Emery came very close to accepting Newcastle’s offer, and that the way the story leaked in England had made things more difficult for him. The dilemma was really over whether he could leave Villarreal in this way, not any concerns over human rights issues in Saudi Arabia.
“In sport, we have to be aware of society, certain political issues, and respect them,” Emery says. “But we should not get much into politics. My profession is sport. So can I give social or political opinions? I have to focus above all on the sporting project, which they offered me from Saudi Arabia. I did not speak to them about anything else.”
During Emery’s almost two decades as a manager, results have come when he could focus primarily on the sporting project. Such as making Valencia clearly the third-best team in La Liga behind Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona and Jose Mourinho’s Real Madrid. Or leading Sevilla to an unprecedented three consecutive Europa League trophies from 2014.
In two years with Paris Saint-Germain, he won seven of the 10 available trophies, but was eliminated in the Champions League last 16 by Barcelona, having won the first leg in Paris 4-0, and then Real Madrid. His rebuilding project at Arsenal started well but went off the rails and he was sacked in November 2019 after just 16 months.
The Athletic suggests that he has worked best when he is able to focus just on the football side, and not deal with the hassles of interfering owners and egocentric star players that disrupted his spells in Paris and London. However, Emery does not really accept the premise of the question.
“I worked very well at PSG and Arsenal, I had no problems there,” he says. “The problem is when you have players who are not performing. I had big players in Paris — Kylian Mbappe, Neymar, Thiago Silva, Marquinhos, Marco Verratti, Thiago Motta. They had bigger egos than here (at Villarreal) but I enjoyed working with them. At Arsenal, the same, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Alexandre Lacazette and the young kids like Bukayo Saka and Emile Smith Rowe.
“I enjoyed my work, independent of whether things were good or not in terms of results, or with the fans. I have always worked the same way.”

That takes us to the structure Emery had to knock down at Arsenal before he could begin the construction work.
The first half of Arsène Wenger’s 22-year stint as manager was hugely successful but the drift during his final seasons meant his eventual successor would face huge challenges.
“It was a difficult moment for any coach coming in, to establish yourself,” Emery says. “Certain players who had been important, but were not any longer, found that difficult to understand. The fans also found it difficult to understand that there needed to be an evolution.
“Changes were needed, and I began those changes.”

GettyImages-1316766458.jpg


Mikel Arteta shakes hands with Emery after Villarreal knocked out Arsenal in last season’s Europa League semi-finals (Photo: David Price/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)
That evolution appeared to be on the right track during a 22-game unbeaten run in the early months of his reign.
At the start of April 2019, Arsenal sat third in the Premier League with only seven matches to go, having finished sixth in Wenger’s final year, and were soon to qualify for the Europa League final. But a late slump saw them finish fifth domestically and suffer a 4-1 defeat to an Eden Hazard-inspired Chelsea in the European showpiece.
“The first season at Arsenal was very good,” Emery says. “We were close to returning to the Champions League coming to the end of the season, but we were playing the Europa League final. We lost our way with all the energy we put into this final. I believe the season would have been perfect if we had qualified for the Champions League.”
Emery’s second season in north London never really got going.
There were ongoing issues with players he had inherited, especially talented but unreliable playmaker Mesut Özil. An increasingly large sector of the fanbase turned against their Spanish coach. The appointment of Granit Xhaka as captain was also controversial with both supporters and team-mates.
Emery says that Arsenal’s hierarchy still had faith in him to turn things around but the increasingly difficult atmosphere meant they felt he had to go.
“Five captains left in the first year, there were many changes and patience was needed,” Emery says. “It was not an easy process. The fans did not have patience. Xhaka had problems with the fans and in the dressing room where other experienced players did not understand his role as captain. Xhaka was an important player for me — he was a good person, very committed to his coach.
“The club was happy with me, but the fans were calling for a change, and it had to happen.”

Some of the explanations for what had gone wrong centred on supposed communication issues, with some particularly unfair focus on Emery’s language skills and accent.
“In Paris, I spoke in French. In England, in English,” he says. “Not perfect English, but I gave talks of 20 minutes and the players understood, my messages were getting through. Some people pointed to my press conferences, but for me, the language was not a barrier in England, or in France.
“(As a player) I had (Welshman) John Toshack at Real Sociedad. He never spoke perfect Spanish and had his own pronunciation, but we took it with humour, we understood him perfectly. My English was not perfectly pronounced, but it was English, like Toshack speaks Spanish. With ‘Good ebening’, I stress the ‘B’ a lot, we do that in Spanish, but it did not bother me, I liked it.”
Emery’s time in London also saw the emergence of young players who are now not only established as key figures in Arsenal’s first team but have also broken into the England senior set-up.
“That was the change. Saka and Smith Rowe began to play with me,” he says. “I gave Saka his Premier League debut against Fulham, on January 1, when he was 17. You had to work with these young players, to replace those who were there before. Gabriel Martinelli, who arrived then too — I knew he was a player who would grow.”
Under Emery’s permanent replacement Mikel Arteta, Arsenal have finished eighth in the Premier League for the past two seasons. Arteta did also win the FA Cup in 2020, and now a fresh-faced side look well-positioned to take Arsenal back to the Champions League for the first time since 2016-17.
Emery says the difficult decisions he made have allowed his fellow Basque to move the team forward within a more patient and understanding environment.
“They have put together a group who are all going in the same direction, working together, showing respect,” he says. “I knew that whoever began after Wenger, it was difficult for people to understand the changes that had to be made.
“Arteta is doing a good job, continuing what I began. He has had that patience from the fans, the patience they did not have with me. But I understand that.”


After rejecting other offers to return to the game, Emery finally took over at Villarreal in the summer of 2020.
The small-town club had punched above their weight for years, but never won a trophy. He was immediately given more power over transfers and off-pitch matters than most of his predecessors at the Estadio de la Ceramica, dealing directly on a day to day basis with Roig, the hands-on club president.
His debut season brought the club’s first final in its 98-year history. They beat Arsenal in the Europa League semi-finals 2-1 on aggregate without too many problems before overcoming Manchester United in a dramatic penalty shootout.

GettyImages-474984724-scaled-e1649082639941.jpg


Sevilla coach Emery holds the Europa League trophy on their victory parade through the Spanish city in 2015 (Photo: Cristina Quicler/AFP via Getty Images)
“(After Arsenal), I was looking to be ambitious again,” Emery says. “And what club could give me that? Winning trophies is very difficult, and winning in Europe is even more difficult. I am very demanding of myself, and was demanding about what Villarreal could do. Winning the Europa League was breaking a barrier. Villarreal was already respected because they play well; it is a small town, a credible sporting project. After winning this trophy, you are seen differently. A title brings prestige, recognition.”
That is also the case for their players.
Villarreal’s squad has 12 Premier League old boys in it, including players once at Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool, Watford, Queens Park Rangers, Leeds United and Leicester City. The former Arsenal manager has four ex-Tottenham Hotspur players in Etienne Capoue, Juan Foyth, Serge Aurier and Giovani Lo Celso (the latter is only on loan, but Villarreal have an option to make the move permanent in the summer). Emery says that Villarreal is an attractive option for Premier League players who are ambitious to win trophies but have little chance to do so, given how few teams can really compete in England.
“Tottenham is also a very big club, but here they (those players) could win things,” he says. “Tottenham has been years without winning anything, no trophies. There are other very good teams in England who do not win things either. It is not easy to win. Liverpool and Manchester City are winning at the moment, recently it was Manchester United and Chelsea too. Teams like West Ham are very good, but they have hardly any chance of winning anything.”
Villarreal’s 2021-22 season has been full of new challenges.
As Europa League winners, they matched Champions League holders Chelsea for 120 minutes in August’s UEFA Super Cup, drawing 1-1 before losing on penalties. In La Liga, they have arguably outplayed all of Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid and Barcelona in the five head-to-head matches so far without beating any of them (one loss, four draws). They sit seventh, 12 points off the top four with eight games left, following a limp 2-0 defeat away to then-bottom Levante on Saturday.

“Last year showed us the path — how to compete, how to work, how to manage 90 minutes and two-legged ties,” Emery explains. “The team grew, matured a lot, and this year we are on the same path.
“It is different to La Liga, Europe motivates you a lot and that takes away a lot of energy. We are in the process of growing, improving, becoming more consistent, and knowing how to use the group and the energies. In La Liga, we do not have that consistency. We need to improve over what is left of the season.”
Their Champions League group campaign was also up and down. Villarreal might have won home and away against Manchester United, but ended up losing both games. They saved their best performance for the must-win final group game away to Atalanta, winning 3-2, and then played even better again in their last-16 tie with Juventus. After Juventus’ new striker Dusan Vlahovic scored after just 33 seconds of the first leg, Emery’s team took control of the tie and eventually achieved a quite outstanding 4-1 aggregate victory that included a 3-0 away triumph in the return fixture.
“When you are playing against teams who have players who can win games on their own — like Vlahovic, or against Manchester United’s Cristiano Ronaldo or Bruno Fernandes, you have to work a lot more on the tactical level, group level, mentality level,” Emery says. “When they (Juventus) scored early here, it seemed it was going to be difficult for us. We knew how to get control of the game, have possession, and score a goal.
“In Turin, we knew if they scored, it was going to be very difficult to beat them. When they had the ball we knew we had to defend together, stay calm. And use the weapons we have. Gerard Moreno (their best striker) was coming back from an injury, so I calculated that with him on the pitch, we could do a bit more in attack. And it happened.”
Villarreal winger Arnaut Danjuma told The Athletic in February that Emery always has a detailed plan for each individual game. The man himself famously said he had watched 17 Manchester United games to prepare for last year’s Europa League final against them. And he has been preparing just as meticulously for this quarter-final with Julian Nagelsmann’s new-look Bayern side.
“The plan for Bayern will be different than Juve,” Emery says. “They are two different teams, with very different ideas of play. I’ve been watching Bayern; in the end, you watch a lot of games.
“I like to work hard on the details, to know the players well, and the coach’s decisions. You have to adapt to how they play.
“Difficult games motivate me a lot. You try to surprise the rival coach, for your team to be better than them tactically. Nagelsmann is an original coach, with his own ideas and personality. And with his youth, he also transmits joy, something fresh, which is good for football.”


Like Nagelsmann, who was managing Hoffenheim in the Bundesliga at age 28, Emery began coaching very early, taking over his first club, third-tier Lorca, when he was 33. The good and bad experiences over his career have not diluted his passion for the job.
“Yes, I’m a better coach now, with all my experiences, the lessons learned, everything I have been through,” he says. “I still have very important challenges and ambitions. Anyone who works in football has to love football and feel passion. If you love it as I do (then), the good times, the bad times, you take them on happily.”
The coach who has had more success than anyone in history in Europe’s secondary club competition still has its biggest one in mind. Before our interview ends, Emery the communicator has one more message to get across to The Athletic’s English language readers.
“I would not rule out coaching abroad again,” he says. “I would not rule out returning to the Premier League. I am better prepared now to take on a job in the Premier League.
“I am learning things all the time here at Villarreal, improving. As a coach, I still want to keep having more experiences and motivations. And I still have that Champions League dream.”
 

Riou

In The Winchester, Waiting For This To Blow Over

Country: Northern Ireland

Player:Gabriel
Don.

Guy put Juve in a spliff and is going to do the same to Bayern.

Unai and my boy Coquelin winning the Europa League and Champions League back to back...

What a time to be alive!
 

A_G

Rice Rice Baby 🎼🎵
A-M CL Draft Campeón 🏆
BTW remember how Emery was cheating on his wife in London and not even trying to be discrete?
 

AberGooner

Established Member
Trusted ⭐

Country: Scotland

Player:Gabriel
I'll always wonder how we'd have turned out if he got the players he wanted but glad for his sake that he got out of England as the media taking the piss out of him was horrible.

Happy for him that he's rebuilded back in Spain and brought Villarreal up a level again.
 

Blood on the Tracks

AG's best friend, role model and mentor.
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Country: England

Player:Rice
Emery seems a really good dude.

Kind of this generations cup specialist manager.

Personally I hope he doesn't come back to England. It would just start all the unfair language stuff with him again in the media.
 

Rex Stone

Long live the fighters
Trusted ⭐

Country: Wales
I'll always wonder how we'd have turned out if he got the players he wanted but glad for his sake that he got out of England as the media taking the piss out of him was horrible.

Happy for him that he's rebuilded back in Spain and brought Villarreal up a level again.

Wonder if the pandemic came 6 months earlier would he still be in a job?

No doubt there was a long stretch Arteta could’ve been binned if crowds were in and unhappy.
 

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