Is Unai Emery right for Arsenal?
Today Unai Emery was officially announced as the new Arsenal Head Coach. Replacing the departing Arsène Wenger. Although a large proportion of Arsenal fans wanted a change from Wenger after his 22 year reign, many still aren’t impressed by the appointment of Emery.
When it was announced Wenger was leaving, Istarted a series looking at candidates to replace, which you can see on my profile. Emery wasn’t on the shortlist as at the time his name wasn’t in the ring as people thought he was staying at PSG.
The article above is part 1, where I outlined and explained four benchmarks a manager should meet to be considered seriously for the job.
-Promote and play young players
-Be younger than 50
-Historically improved teams
-Play attractive football
How well does Emery fit?
Firstly, he is 46 years old and therefore passes the second test. The Spanish coach has been managing teams for the last fourteen years. His highlights include a hattrick of Europa League successes with Sevilla and a Ligue 1 title with PSG last season.
Here is Emery’s coaching ELO rating. This for me is a simple way to look at how a club has improved over time. You can see a pretty steady trend of growth for Emery himself as he moved up within the coaching world.
He has not had a large impact on any club he’s been at, in terms of ELO growth. Sevilla experienced fast growth in the first two years of his appointment, with their ELO increasing near by 200. But, his final season was less successful and their ELO crashed a bit.
At Valencia, there was a small positive trend, but not that convincing. PSG didn’t improve either, but unless you win the Champions League there is not a huge amount that PSG can improve. Almería obviously improved a lot, but I’m not taking much from this as it is a smaller club where a good coach can make a big difference.
For reference Arsenal’s ELO is currently 1821.
The next benchmark is to have a history of using young players. Above you can see the age utility graphs of the penultimate seasons at Valencia and Sevilla, the clubs he spent the most time at and are similar standard to Arsenal. In both seasons no player played over 80% of minutes, largely using players aged 25 to 29.
No players aged under 20 were given any significant minutes throughout his time at Valencia and Sevilla. This is a slight concern for meeting the benchmark. However, it depends on the priorities of the Arsenal board.
I’m not making too many conclusions after looking at these age utility graphs as his behaviour and squad usage could be very different at Arsenal as resources and priorities change.
Lastly is the need to play attractive football. I’m not here to write a full analysis of his style and tactics. But, I’ve linked two articles where you can read about his philosophy and play. Attractive football is subjective, so go watch a Sevilla match from 2015/16 and decide for yourself.
Conclusion
Overall, Emery is a young manager with good experience and plays attacking football which can hopefully bring excitement to the Emirates. It’s a stretch to say that he improves teams and it is little evidence to say he promotes young players to the first team.
However, he has successfully worked under a sporting director at Sevilla and didn’t have a large hand in transfer, which is also likely to be the case at Arsenal.
One large concern is his history of poor away form. Something that Arsenal have suffered with recently also. It is not something the club can continue if they want to reestablish themselves as a major player in European Football.
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