Unai Emery

[PaulWinch again]

Indeed, our decisions on attackers have been dreadful of late. How a side with limited resources manage to end up spending so much on Guessand, and then signing a player and not playing him at all is just dreadful.

[Brend'Watkins]

Lindelof is our best signing this season. Guessand is our worst in many a season. He offers very little except hinderance to his own team. He does it so well too.

We could have moved Pau into the midfield and brought Mings on. Guessand could have had the last 10 or so for Watkins who was very poor today.

[brontebilly]

I'm starting to wonder how much, take Elliot as an example. It's clear he doesn't rate him anywhere near the fee agreed. £30m for Guessand. £200k a week for Sancho. These are joke deals.

I doubt he gets too involved in the wages and transfer fee side of it. My take on the Elliot situation is that Emery really wanted Asensio to come back. Asensio seemed to hold out for the deal. But the club pushed for Elliot instead late in the window when we could make the financials work with Liverpool. Emery never gave Elliot a chance really and throwing him under the bus after the Sunderland game was very strange. Bit of a power play in action I suspect.

Sancho is the kind of deal stupid clubs make on deadline day. The mind boggles with Guessand.

[Goldie.7]

Emery knows the season is going to fizzle out having watched his bizarre post match interview. Restricted from making signings and injuries galore have forced his hand.

If manure want him in the summer he might fancy it tbh. Last week I would have said no chance but that interview is very telling.

[PeterWithesShin]

Official post match interview

https://x.com/AVFCOfficial/status/2012972131831644581

[RamboandBruno]

Emery knows the season is going to fizzle out having watched his bizarre post match interview. Restricted from making signings and injuries galore have forced his hand.

If manure want him in the summer he might fancy it tbh. Last week I would have said no chance but that interview is very telling.

What was bizarre about the interview, he just seemed really frustrated and pissed off, isn’t that the natural reaction.

[LeonW]

Performance today was absolutely dreadful but Emery’s post match interview was very worrying. He’s as frustrated as we are with this unfair game we’re playing on the finances. Letting Malen go with no back up coming in is poor from the club and it’s clearly not Monchi here. It’s a continuation of what we saw in the summer.

[PaulWinch again]

The financial rules are annoying - but under such constraints it seems odd to spend a good chunk of money on players who aren’t first team ready. We also might want to be a bit more judicious in how we spend the money on the first team - Guessand not being good enough and Elliott not being used are bad mistakes for a side in our circumstances.

[hipkiss92]

File today with Sheffield United. olympiacos, Palace SF and Old Trafford last day of the season. Chance to move to the next level and we froze.

Though if Rogers had bought his shooting boots would have been a different result. Would have liked to see him move wide left and Buendia into the middle for the last 30 minutes too

[LeonW]

The financial rules are annoying - but under such constraints it seems odd to spend a good chunk of money on players who aren’t first team ready. We also might want to be a bit more judicious in how we spend the money on the first team - Guessand not being good enough and Elliott not being used are bad mistakes for a side in our circumstances.

That’s fair. And we choose to let Malen go without a back up already in place. No matter how anyone spins it, it’s a small time, reactive approach.

[brontebilly]

Interview was poor. All he had to say was the club are doing all they can to get players in but they have to be the right ones. Plenty of fighting talk pre game but that "not top 5" talk is defeatist.

[PeterWithesShin]

We could on the brink of some players coming in that give us all a massive lift and set us on the way to world domination. Although Unai didn't look like someone about to enjoy a lavish Xmas, more like someone about to eat some Marmite as there's nothing else in the cupboard. And that's only still there as it's shit. So much like Guessand.

Wayhey!

[Beard82]

I wonder if he is trying to take the pressure off the team

[Tokyo Sexwhale]

The financial rules are annoying - but under such constraints it seems odd to spend a good chunk of money on players who aren’t first team ready. We also might want to be a bit more judicious in how we spend the money on the first team - Guessand not being good enough and Elliott not being used are bad mistakes for a side in our circumstances.

The trap we are in is that our first XI is so good, that we can't afford to buy anyone who is better than them - either their transfer fee or their wages will be too much.

So that limits us to loans, Bosmans/cheap players, youngsters and damaged goods and hope that Emery and his coaches can get a tune out of them.  All of these categories of player are highly volatile with a high miss rate.

And that's why our transfer window was Elliott, Sancho, Guessand, Bizot and Lindelof.

2/5 is probably a reasonable hit rate.

[PaulWinch again]

It’s not really when the 2 are back up players. Lindelof has done great, but he is a back up. The players we needed to augment our attack have basically all failed. Sancho has been the best, but he’s been at most ok and clearly that sounds weird with no goals or assists.