Morning all.
The 2017/18 season really was all about Arsene Wenger because in the April of 2018, he announced he’d be parting ways with the club at the end of the campaign. Jumped or pushed, it matters not really as the most important thing at the time was Arsenal FC needed change.
Before his departure though, he oversaw a pretty rotten season. It was the first time Arsenal weren’t competing in the Champions League, instead, Thursday Sunday football was slotted into our campaign.
The summer transfer window saw Sead Kolasinac join for free and then a few weeks later, Alexandre Lacazette made the switch from France to north London. That was it until January when Konstantinos Mavropanos and Pierre-Emerick joined the club. The worst January deal the club made was letting Alexis Sanchez go to Man Utd in exchange for Henrikh Mkhitaryan. I do wonder whether Alexis would have left had he known a change of manager was just a few months away.
In addition to Alexis leaving, Yaya Sanogo, Wojciech Szczesny, Kieran Gibbs and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain departed that summer. Then in January, Theo Walcott, Olivier Giroud, Francis Coquelin and Mathieu Debuchy moved on to pastures new.
Our domestic form was dreadful. Four away wins all season, 11 defeats and rest were draws. Only a narrow win over Huddersfield on the final day of the season prevented us from not winning a game away from home in 2018. Having recorded 13 defeats and 6 draws in total, we finished in 6th place.
In the FA Cup, we suffered a 4-2 defeat against Nottingham Forest in the third round, the first time that had happened since 1996. We reached the League Cup Final but were battered 3-0 by Man City.
Atletico Madrid ended our Europa Cup run at the semi-final stage.
2018/19 – a new dawn…
For the first time in over twenty years, a few new faces were sat in the Arsenal dugout following the arrival of Unai Emery as head coach.
New players arrived, not all the choice of the new coach if reports at the time are to be believed. Stephan Lichtsteiner joined on a free transfer followed by Bernd Leno, Sokratis, Lucas Torreira and Matteo Guendouzi. In January, Denis Suarez joined on loan from Barcelona.
Per Mertesacker retired to become our academy coach and Santi Cazorla left for free.
The season itself was ok in parts, including a 22 game unbeaten run but the football itself left a lot to be desired. Still, it was Emery’s first season so the hope was that things would improve in time. However, they didn’t. A battering by Chelsea in the Europa Cup Final was as awful as it was embarrassing. Especially at Emery was and still is the best when it comes to Europa Cup wins. We ended the season in 5th place, Auba had scored 30+ goals in all competitions but exits in both domestic cups left us trophy less.
I’m not sure many fans out there in the world of Arsenal would have cared if Emery had been moved on at the end of the season. The now sole owner since August, Stan Kroenke, along with the rest of the board at the time, thought differently.
2019/20 – A season of change.
The summer transfer window was quite a busy one as Arsenal completed the signings of Gabriel Martinelli, Nicolas Pepe, Kieran Tierney, David Luiz and the big one, William Saliba. Dani Ceballos joined on a season long loan. Saliba left on loan for the season too.
There were a large number of departures too as out went Stephan Lichtsteiner, Aaron Ramsey, and Danny Welbeck, sold David Ospina, Takuma Asano, Laurent Koscielny, Carl Jenkinson, Alex Iwobi, and Nacho Monreal. and loaned out Eddie Nketiah, Mohamed Elneny, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Emile Smith Rowe, and Konstantinos Mavropanos.
Sections of the Arsenal fanbase were unhappy with our transfer business conducted from owner Stan Kroenke which led to a social media hashtag “#WeCareDoYou”?
How Emery survived until November I don’t know because the start to this season had been pretty dire. After winning our opening two fixtures, we took a beating at Anfield. Then we won just two of our next ten matches, most of which were against what I would call “smaller clubs”. On the 29th of November, the board had seen enough and Unai Emery was sacked with Freddie Ljungberg stepping in as caretaker manager. Even back then I thought it would take a miracle to lift the group of players out of the depths of the doldrums they were in and Freddie wasn’t able to do it. Arsenal needed a strong manager with experience to come in and get this group together again. What did Arsenal do? Appoint Mikel Arteta, an ex player who had never managed a game before in his life. Bonkers I thought, absolutely bonkers! Arteta was not what Arsenal needed regardless of his three years of working with Guardiola. Talking of Guardiola, not long ago he said that during his time with Mikel Arteta at City, not once did Arteta celebrate a victory of his old club.
Somehow though, he managed to turn what looked like a fragmented and fractious group of players into FA Cup winners. Vamos!
Catch up in the comments.
Thanks Kev. Great shame with Guendouzi as you say, he showed great promise but the boy had a chip on his shoulder which has cost him a better career than he’s had. He could have been playing for France had he been more levelheaded. Plonker!
Sokratis had a great mentality but wasn’t always that good, but neither were Arsenal back then.
Great post Rico, Arsenal were a shambles back then, I remember going to Cardiff in Emery’s first season and watching a PL game during that unbeaten run. Unai was trying to change things but his communication skills were a definite issue which I’m sure affected confidence in his processes.
The Cardiff game was all over the place, Arsenal were all over the place, defensively all over the place, but Lacazette came on and helped us to a 4-2 win, I still couldn’t tell you how we won.
Torriera vs Tottenham was a highlight, defeat at Anfield where the Arsenal midfield mirrored the Plains of North America, nothing for miles, was the lowlight. Guendozi promised a lot but ultimately spent more time getting into unnecessary spats with opponents, its good to be reminded of the job Arteta has done in weeding out the many wasters and underachievers we had at that time.
Sunny in Essex, with a slight breeze but the prospect of showers.
Meanwhile it’s funny, but not surprising, how some players always suffer the maximum penalty when transgressing whilst others (Messi) get a free hit. I guess it would take a referee of immensely strong, but rare character to dismiss the darling of FIFA.
After all the Inter Miami and US fans and more importantly those who pay the piper (TV companies) demand the presence of their star man and never mind the laws of the game.
Afternoon Cicero, all change here with the sunshine breaking through. It’s set to be nice now for the next week or so.
A few close misses for NZ this morning..
G’day Rico, Potter. Dry and sunny now with a bit of wind in enchanting Norfolk.
Bright and sunny at the Oval after a slight delay New Zealand, put in to bat, are 19 for 1 after 9 overs.
Wet and windy in the south too..
So many changes indeed and at all levels. I think Emery could have been great but he joined us at the wrong time and with the wrong people around him. As the story goes, players he wanted he didn’t get, so it must have been difficult for him if true.
Whoever dealt with our transfers back then did great to bring Saliba to the club, Martinelli too as I’m not as much as a critic of him as perhaps others are.
As a club, I think once the ownership and board changed, things began to improve.
Morning all from wet and windy Norfolk ,
Turbulent times indeed , to expect a seamless turnover was naive at best. It didn’t happen at United and it didn’t happen here and it will not at Man City either.
The Kroenkes , about whom I was extremely dubious had in retrospect the foresight to choose and then back their man with the realism that it was a time consuming project that would not come clean overnight.
Whilst we concentrate on the the turnover of players , things were changing in the background with many changes in the boardroom , Chips Keswick , Gazidis , Ken Friar , Sanllehi and Lord Harris all left and on the next level Edu and Vinai Venkatesham arrived.
Also Dick Law , Fahmy and Mislintat went as the Americans showed the strength of purpose to strive for progress to the top and demonstrated why they are billionaires being ruthless when they have to be .
The next summation leading to the present will demonstrate that they knew better than most of us how to run a multi million pound business.
I look forward to it.