ARSENAL'S upturn under Mikel Arteta was swift and uplifting during his opening weeks in the role. This is largely because the team’s form and confidence were at such a low ebb that the new sense of organisation, intensity and clear evidence of a plan offered a huge improvement on what came before. That sense of improvement will naturally become more gradual and incremental over the coming months [assuming the improvement continues, of course].
The Gunners were allowed to plumb such depths prior to Arteta’s arrival because of the inordinate amount of time it took to sack Unai Emery. When you spend enough time around football, you pick up a sixth sense for certain things. When a team is working up a head of steam and is about to score a goal, that half-second’s dread when a centre-half slides ominously towards an opponent in the box to concede a penalty and when a manager has resolutely ‘lost the dressing room.’
It remains a huge source of concern that Arsenal’s Head of Football, Raul Sanllehi, could not smell that Unai Emery’s goose was not so much cooked, but burned to an absolute crisp. Smoke was billowing out of the oven; the fire alarm was sounding and Sanllehi continued to fiddle with the TV remote. It’s worrying for Arsenal to have a powerful executive that so steadfastly failed to act on such an obvious situation.
The year is 2023. Arsenal are without a win in 4 years. Raul Sanllehi is still backing Unai Emery to turn it around given a little more time.
— Tim Stillman (@Stillberto) November 28, 2019
Following the team’s predictable 2-0 defeat to Leicester in November, there was a two-week pause for international fixtures. Emery’s race had been run for a few months and the break in the calendar offered the perfect opportunity to make a much-needed managerial switch. The pause would have given the club time to shuffle the managerial decks and allowed the new coach time to prepare his players.
The fixtures immediately following the November international fixtures were Southampton [H], Frankfurt [H], Norwich City [a], Brighton & Hove Albion [H] and West Ham United [a]. Few gimmes there, of course, but with a two-week hiatus, Mikel Arteta, who was as available in November as he was when he was finally appointed in late December, would have had a good opportunity to get his ideas across and a relatively gentle run of fixtures to allow them to take root.
Instead, Arsenal clung onto Emery and wasted the logical time to make the change and were forced to throw rookie coach Freddie Ljungberg into an impossible situation during a congested period of the calendar. Ljungberg was given the reserve goalkeeping coach and the head of the academy as a coaching staff to work with. These are not the machinations of a well-run football club.
Once it became clear that Ljungberg was, understandably, not going to be able to steer this rudderless ship back on course, Arsenal essentially panicked and opted for Arteta. It may well prove to be the right appointment for Arsenal – in fact, I think it will prove to be – but it was arrived at through a farcical process.
Arteta’s first game in charge was Boxing Day, during literally the busiest period of the domestic season, with games against Chelsea and Manchester United packed into the schedule. The whole episode speaks to a spectacular lack of cogent planning from the Head of Football whom, we are told, wanted to offer Unai Emery a contract extension in the summer.
For real though, this Kurzawa to Arsenal stuff just screams of Raul Sanllehi buttering up Kia Joorabchian and making sure he's on his side
— xav ❄ (@afcXav) January 16, 2020
It’s not only the bungled handling of the coaching situation that gives cause for concern. Arsenal’s summer transfer business, the subject of such excitement when the season started, has demonstratively weakened the team. Not all of that is on Sanllehi of course. Nicolas Pepe’s slow acclimatisation and Kieran Tierney and Dani Ceballos’ injury troubles aren’t Raul’s fault.
In isolation, moving Henrikh Mkhitaryan [definitely] and Alex Iwobi [maybe] onto pastures new weren’t terrible decisions, but the failure to recruit players of a similar profile also speaks to poor squad building. The decision to sell Iwobi, in particular, seemed rushed and ill-thought out after maxing out the credit card on Pepe.
It’s not that Iwobi was a world-beater per se, but not every player in a squad has to be, some give you structure and enable you to play in a certain way. Upgrading on Iwobi with a similar type of player would have been evidence of shrewd planning, fire selling him in the final hours of the window due to overspend on a completely different type of player demonstrated a lack of foresight.
The top three positions in the Premier League are on lock for this season, but with Chelsea, Manchester United and Spurs all struggling, fourth place was very low hanging fruit. Even an Arsenal side in average form, or one willing to fix the Emery mess before it became an indoor bonfire, would have been able to compete for the Champions League positions. That Arsenal cannot even challenge for fourth this season is down to Raul Sanllehi and his position ought to be reviewed as a result.
