Unai Emery

[Drummond]

I think Emery is really highlighting what a good manager does, and how lacking we've been for a long time.

[olaftab]

Stevenage defeat will piss me off till I die. Unai is stained with that and nothing can correct it. 

he sent out a team against a league 2 side more than capable of winning the game and the team fucked up.

No, he didn’t. He sent out a team lacking in drive and ambition and total disrespect for the lower league opposition.

Utter nonsense. He sent out a team full of professionals expecting them to perform professionally. The starting line up included 10 players who had international experience including two that just returned from the WC. You could see after the game just now much it fucked him off to lose and it taught him how much work he had in front of him to change the attitude and culture at the club. Something we starting to see much more now. But he showed no disrespect for the tournament by picking that side. A team that at home that should have won comfortably. Every PL team, irrespective of who they played in Rd 3 made a number of changes to what might be considered their best XI. And when you consider he had only been at the club a couple of months I don’t think he even knew his best XI. What his experience and knowledge probably told him was that 10 internationals and one player in Chambers that had plenty of top flight experience should have been more than enough to win that game.

I get it. We lost. It fucked us all off. We haven’t won it in an eternity and it would be great to do it again. But this is such a shit example of us not taking it seriously. Have some perspective. Something that absolutely can be levelled at former managers over the years.

Say what you like, it's your opinion and that's fine. There is lot of nonsense spouted abouted "the manager sent out a team that should comfortably beat inferior opposition". There is no such thing as inferior opposition. That day against Stevenage  it should have been our very best available XI. No ifs no buts.

[pauliewalnuts]

With all due respect, what hyperbolic nonsense

If there is “no such thing as inferior opposition” (that’s the nonsense bit) what difference would sending our strongest team out have made?

We were playing a league two side, there should have been no need to play our strongest side whatsoever - he did what absolutely every single other premier league manager does in circumstances like that.

The players let him down. Specifically whichever one it was that failed to even attempt to close down at the corner for their second goal.

[LeeB]

Stevenage defeat will piss me off till I die. Unai is stained with that and nothing can correct it. 

he sent out a team against a league 2 side more than capable of winning the game and the team fucked up.

No, he didn’t. He sent out a team lacking in drive and ambition and total disrespect for the lower league opposition.

Utter nonsense. He sent out a team full of professionals expecting them to perform professionally. The starting line up included 10 players who had international experience including two that just returned from the WC. You could see after the game just now much it fucked him off to lose and it taught him how much work he had in front of him to change the attitude and culture at the club. Something we starting to see much more now. But he showed no disrespect for the tournament by picking that side. A team that at home that should have won comfortably. Every PL team, irrespective of who they played in Rd 3 made a number of changes to what might be considered their best XI. And when you consider he had only been at the club a couple of months I don’t think he even knew his best XI. What his experience and knowledge probably told him was that 10 internationals and one player in Chambers that had plenty of top flight experience should have been more than enough to win that game.

I get it. We lost. It fucked us all off. We haven’t won it in an eternity and it would be great to do it again. But this is such a shit example of us not taking it seriously. Have some perspective. Something that absolutely can be levelled at former managers over the years.

Say what you like, it's your opinion and that's fine. There is lot of nonsense spouted abouted "the manager sent out a team that should comfortably beat inferior opposition". There is no such thing as inferior opposition. That day against Stevenage  it should have been our very best available XI. No ifs no buts.

Mate, I reckon the only person more angered and dismayed by the Stevenage result than you was Unai himself, it pretty much ended the Villa careers of several players. Yes, it was a mistake but he was also 6 weeks into the job and needed to what those players not in the 1st team could do. It was still a strong enough team to win that game, or should have been, it wasn't like he'd made 11 changes.

Anyway, if there's one manager that wil learn a lesson from it, it's him.

[Risso]

I’m with Aftab. He’d already used the “I need to see if Olsen is as shit as he looks card” in the League Cup defeat, so to pick him again was just stupid.

[Axl Rose]

I’m with Aftab. He’d already used the “I need to see if Olsen is as shit as he looks card” in the League Cup defeat, so to pick him again was just stupid.

Me too. Aftab is spot on.

[Drummond]

I’m with Aftab. He’d already used the “I need to see if Olsen is as shit as he looks card” in the League Cup defeat, so to pick him again was just stupid.

Pretty much every manager gives the second keeper a run in the Cup. Plus Martinez still wasn't exactly back to himself after the World Cup.

And it wasn't all on Olsen anyway. Dendoncker fucked up (as Kamara also did in the other game) and that closing down at the corner was nowt to do with him.

It's easy to blame Emery for picking that side, but those players let him down, badly.

[PaulWinch again]

With all due respect, what hyperbolic nonsense

If there is “no such thing as inferior opposition” (that’s the nonsense bit) what difference would sending our strongest team out have made?

We were playing a league two side, there should have been no need to play our strongest side whatsoever - he did what absolutely every single other premier league manager does in circumstances like that.

The players let him down. Specifically whichever one it was that failed to even attempt to close down at the corner for their second goal.

Yep they absolutely were inferior, that’s why they’re in League Two. The team that played should have comfortably put them away, but they fucked up.

[pauliewalnuts]

I would caveat with one thing.

I wouldn't have played Olsen - I wouldn't have Olsen anywhere near the bench even, even in our strange two-keeper-subs existence. I suspect Emery gets that now and we'll never see the lettuce-handed one again.

That I do think he got wrong, but that is categorically not the same thing as saying "we should have played our strongest XI", which, against a L2 side, is something absolutely no top flight manager would do, and was utterly unnecessary.

[pauliewalnuts]

And it wasn't all on Olsen anyway. Dendoncker fucked up (as Kamara also did in the other game) and that closing down at the corner was nowt to do with him.

Not all on him, but for the second, there's no way he should have been beaten at his near post so easily.

[algy]

With all due respect, what hyperbolic nonsense

If there is “no such thing as inferior opposition” (that’s the nonsense bit) what difference would sending our strongest team out have made?

We were playing a league two side, there should have been no need to play our strongest side whatsoever - he did what absolutely every single other premier league manager does in circumstances like that.

The players let him down. Specifically whichever one it was that failed to even attempt to close down at the corner for their second goal.

Stevenage were never going to roll over and let us beat them, were they?  They knew beating us would be a big scalp, possibly the biggest day of their career ... look at Ronnie Radford, for example - everyone knows who he is, and it's off the back of a single goal in the FA Cup which happened a decade before I was born.  Those Stevenage players were 100% guaranteed to work harder, and play better than potentially at any other moment this season.  Upsets happen because one side is greatly underestimated by the other.

The players we put out should've been able to raise their game high enough that it wouldn't have mattered how well they played, though. You'd expect Premier League squad players at the very least to be well-above-average-Championship quality, like Hourihane or El Goalzi for example.  I think it's reasonable to think that Emery should've either done more to make them raise their game, or played different players.  However, it's not all on him.  Those players are responsible for their own performances, and they simply weren't anywhere near the required standard.

[LeeB]

Also, on the Olsen caveat thing, he'd kept a clean sheet at Spurs in his previous game.

I randomly watched a load of footage of the 76-77 season yesterday, my God Mervyn Day was in a 'difficult moment' using the modern football parlance

[Clark W Griswold]

I don't think he should have played Olsen after the 2nd half performance at Man Utd but otherwise it was all ok and i blame everyone that day including the manager in a small way. He's not beyond criticism but if you way up everything since he came in it's very positive and i wouldn't get too hung up on the result in terms of Unai himself, embarrassing as it was.

[Dick Edwards]

Also, on the Olsen caveat thing, he'd kept a clean sheet at Spurs in his previous game.

I randomly watched a load of footage of the 76-77 season yesterday, my God Mervyn Day was in a 'difficult moment' using the modern football parlance

Mervyn Day was at West Ham at that time. I don't think he joined us until the dark 1980s days between winning the European Cup and relegation.

[SamTheMouse]

If the rest of the team had done its job properly, Olsen could have afforded to fuck up a couple of times without endangering the result. He was far from the only offender.

He's shit though, and shouldn't have been anywhere near the club, let alone the team.