There’s an understandably complex mix of emotions pouring out of Arsenal right now.
This is not simply the loss of a beloved and long-standing club figure. Arsene Wenger, for all his flaws in the final few years of his reign, was synonymous with the club (almost literally) and his departure was always going to cause emotional upheaval.
But this isn’t a bereavement. Far from it. No, tinged with the sadness is a sense of excitement, imbued in the sorrow is a sense of adventure: Arsenal are not mourning a death, but rather experiencing an overdue divorce.
From the club’s point of view, learning to love again is a difficult proposition but they appear to have understood that. Rather than replacing Arsene Wenger – the impossible task – they have appointed a ‘head coach’, a man who will work alongside Raul Sanllehi and Sven Mislintat rather than feel as though he is above them. But even then, Arsenal and their board have not appointed a manager in the 21st century let alone in this new-fangled super club era. When it comes to the dating game, the middle-aged divorcé isn’t usually the best of players.
On paper, though, they have themselves an interesting choice. With a profile similar enough to Wenger to appear beguiling, Unai Emery has a thoroughly modern edge that suggests the Gunners won’t be falling into the same trap as they have done over the last half decade.
The former Paris Saint-Germain coach is a man whose success at Sevilla was built upon a base of two classy – yet solid – defensive midfielders and a counter-attacking threat based on nous, pace and skill. He brings with him, too, a stubborn insistence on the most modern methods – the kind of academic video analysis that some footballers find off-putting or simply boring.
It all starts to sound familiar when you put it like that. Wenger came to Highbury with a similar profile. Instead of video analysis, read modern training techniques and clean eating. His side played fast attacking football with players like Thierry Henry, Marc Overmars and Nicolas Anelka on board. His two classy central midfielders were Patrick Vieira and Emmanuel Petit, later replaced by Gilberto Silva. But in the end you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the subject of a hashtag that takes on meme status in all corners of the globe.
Comparing events in football history to one another is a dangerous game and rarely useful. So this is where the shared paths end. Emery is not Wenger, but that appears to be precisely the point.
By this point, we all know what they are. Certainly one thing we never had in Wenger’s time was a multitude of experts giving their insight into every aspect of a foreign manager’s career from his time in Spain to his spell in France. Even if Arsenal fans are currently underwhelmed at the prospect of a man who turned a 4-0 lesson in pressing Barcelona into a 6-1 humiliation, whatever they’re asking, it certainly isn’t “Unai who?”
But what the last 24 hours have shown – and what we already knew from seeing his teams in Europe – is a man who, for all his similarities with a late 90s Wenger (updated for the modern world), will bring with him the precise qualities that late-stage Wenger lacked.
His pragmatism stands out as the biggest differentiator to his predecessor, as does his ability to plot and scheme with his scouts and director of football – something the Frenchman seemed incapable of doing. Emery’s diligence in having a plan for every opponent appears to be at odds with Wenger’s stubborn insistence on worrying only about his own team’s game.
They say that a country elects its new leaders based on the qualities they think are lacking in the old one. George Bush’s folksiness was lambasted as stupidity, so Barack Obama’s professorial air swept into the White House. Wenger’s lack of concern about his brittle midfield could be offset by Emery’s insistence on not one but two holding players in the 4-2-3-1 formation he’s played for years; the Frenchman’s phobia of creating a proper plan adjusted for his opponents makes his slavish meticulousness all the more appealing.
Arsenal could be forgiven for breaking up with Wenger and looking to replace him with another just the same. And Emery ticks some of the boxes his predecessor did 22 years ago. But this is a new, bespoke model who might be exactly the right man at the right time for the Gunners.
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