The Truth Hurts: Arsenal haven’t improved from last season – Unai Emery should be sacked

Despite having a new manager and investing in their defence last summer, Arsenal are still the mentally weak, defensively fragile team we saw last year.

When Arsenal fans hounded out Arsene Wenger last season, many expected the club to hire an upgrade as manager. While many fans were disappointed with the appointment of Unai Emery, some of the business he did in the summer, along with his 22 match unbeaten run in the first portion of the season showed that he had promise as Arsenal manager.

His task wasn’t easy by any means, as he inherited an extremely top-heavy squad which struggled away from home, in big games, and when defending in general. While it seemed he had fixed some of these issues at one point, we can see now that they have come crawling back to haunt the Gunners. When looking back at the season, we can confidently say now that Arsenal have not really improved, which raises a massive question mark on Emery’s right to move forward with this team.

Last summer, Arsenal brought in Lucas Torreira, Sokratis Papastathopoulos, and Bernd Leno, along with Stephan Lichtsteiner and Matteo Guendouzi. The former 3 primarily were brought in as upgrades to the current first team, as they added more quality to all the defensive positions they play in. Arsenal conceded far too many goals in Wenger’s final years.

While all of these players bar Lichtsteiner played pretty well over the course of the season, Arsenal have conceded the exact same amount of goals as last season in the league, whilst conceding more chances this season in general. Unai Emery has a lot of explaining to do when it comes to this, as you’d expect significant upgrades at centre-back and in net to make a positive difference in Arsenal’s scorelines.

Another area where the Gunners haven’t improved whatsoever is when playing away from home. Both last season and this season, Arsenal have been susceptible to falling apart mentally when the fans aren’t behind them. This is a sign of a weak side, and Unai Emery has not been able to reverse this narrative that Arsenal are a mentally fragile club.

We know this is going to be a long-term process for the North London club, but their hierarchy would have expected at least some progression in these key areas this season, as they were the downfalls of Arsene Wenger’s final few years. Unai Emery has improved some things, such as big game performances, but the negatives outweigh the positives significantly.

Despite all the hype around Lacazette and Aubameyang, Arsenal have created far less chances this season than last season, and they even scored one less goal in the Premier League this year.

If you add the fact that the Gunners had top 4 in their hands just a few months ago, and they completely bottled it by losing a string of games to mid-table clubs, then it seems that Unai Emery should be sacked by the club. For other teams, a season like this is without a doubt deserving of the sack – why should it be different for Arsenal?

Although Arsenal aren’t the most spoiled club in terms of finances, their squad investment of £70 million in last summer’s transfer market warrants an improvement in the side, and as much as Unai Emery has shown promise this season, we can say now that the Gunners have lost the Europa League final, that they have made hardly any improvement from last season, and Emery’s job should be in question because of it.