Why not? Liverpool are apparently challengers, we'll have 2 more transfer windows and a season to bed Emery's tactics in.
Printable View
:nod: I think the desire to build Emery up partially stems from the fact that people said Wenger was leaving the club in a terrible state, which will take years to fix it when in fact. Rather than admit that was complete *******s and Wenger still had eyes on the long-term good of the club, they make Emery out to be a miracle worker (I do like him but there is some over-the-top praise, I do admit). Compared to the state that Ferguson left United in (admittedly as champions), Arsene didn't leave us so badly off
Hmmm - this 'Wenger is leaving the club in a terrible state' is not a narrative I particularly remember. I think the feeling was more that we had good enough players and enough money that we should be challenging for the league more often and winning the odd pot, not declining each year as was the case for the past few years. Throw in the lack of progress by many of the younger players and it felt like it he was not making the most of what was available to him.
Of course it's only been 16 games or so but not only has Emery implemented a new way of playing, we're within 6 points of the top of the table almost a third of the way into a season where the top 3 teams are on unprecedented runs. ManU won the league with 79 points in 99 and we might have 3 teams with more than 80 as it stands. Plus, we're seeing improvements in younger players (Holding, Iwobi, Bellerin etc) and tactical adjustments/substitutions that seemed to never happen under Wenger. All in all it's just a great start that everyone should be excited about.
If anyone feels the need to endlessly compare this to Wenger, rather than celebrate what he brought us while looking forward to what we can achieve under Unai, they probably are on a wind up (Burney) or in need of a life (Monty).
:-)
I don't disagree with much of that bar the first point - this is just a token headline from an article in the Sunday Times
"Pity the poor manager who has to rebuild Arsenal when Arsène Wenger goes" - there were quite a few articles like that and then factor in the more vile abuse from some of the Wenger outers about him ruining the club (along with Ivan and Stan). Of course, not all people who wanted him out were of this mind but there was certainly a lot of them.
Indeed, the phrase "managed decline" became part of the anti-Wenger lexicon over the past few years
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=we...hrome&ie=UTF-8
You can argue that Arsenal were in decline (the results indicated that that was clearly true) without arguing that Wenger was leaving the club in a terrible state. It depends on how bad he was at managing the players and money available to him. :-)
Not sure how anyone can suggest that Arsenal as a club weren't far ahead of where we were when he arrived. In fact, virtually every analysis of his performance - no matter how bad - started with 'let's not forget what he has done for this club but...'