Football managers obsess over control. There are so many moving parts, so many ways in which a simple attacking move can play out, so much good or bad luck sprinkled over a season, that the job effectively becomes a challenge to dominate your presence over as many players, and as many of their actions on and off the pitch, as possible. You can never have enough control.
Unai Emery knows that more than most. In August 2018, after just two league games in charge of Arsenal, Emery’s grasp of English was limited. But he had clearly learned the importance of one word: “My idea is control. Control in the game – but the opposition want the same thing. This control is to not let the opposition do their work, their play. For me, we didn’t have control in our first two matches. I want to have more control to find the win in this match.” It clearly helped that the word is the same in his native tongue. Control is control.
But how can any manager have control when they have no earthly idea how good their new club is, and therefore what the expectations are? If Newcastle United finish 17th this season, is that par for the course? If they don’t buy sufficiently or sufficiently well in January and go down, is that an abject failure? If they spend and surge to finish 13th, is that a roaring success?
For that reason, there is a train of thought that being the second appointment by Newcastle’s owners would be preferable to being the first. Much like Manchester United without Alex Ferguson or – sorry about this, Unai – Arsenal without Arsene Wenger, entering a club in which nobody quite knows what the future holds can be a mighty difficult task.
But then maybe that makes Emery the perfect fit, because English football isn’t quite sure what to make of him either. His spell at Arsenal was a mass of contradictions: the team that finished two points off third or the one that flunked their shot at the Champions League; the team that got to the Europa League final by sweeping aside Napoli and Valencia, or the one that, well, flunked their shot at the Champions League in the final.
Back in Spain, even more dichotomous results. Emery provided Villarreal with the greatest moment in the club’s history and yet, five months later there are suspicions they are not too sorry to see him going. Villarreal are 13th in La Liga having won twice all season. Wait for the flipside, again: they have only lost three times, were the last team in the league to lose their unbeaten record at the start of the season and have a good shot at reaching the Champions League knockout stages.
In England, Emery suffered from the type of mockery that seems to be reserved for foreign managers who are guilty only of sitting slightly outside the elite and lacking the charisma to have created a PR bandwagon around their managerial identity. He also pronounced the word “evening” slightly wrong, which amused the type of people whose expertise in a foreign language amounts to speaking English slower and slightly more loudly.
To some extent, these are all trifling matters. Newcastle United are second bottom of the Premier League and are set to poach a coach from a club competing in the Champions League in midseason that has experience of the league. Beggars can’t be choosers and few on Tyneside are complaining. Having Joe Kinnear and John Carver amongst your last nine managers creates a swell of appreciation for probable competence.
Newcastle’s uncertainty about their own short-term future leaves no sure answers. Either you appoint a stabiliser and stand accused of settling, or appoint someone with no experience of a relegation fight and stand accused of running before you can walk. In fairness to Newcastle’s owners, they stand accused of far worse.
But this is a potentially fascinating appointment because we have no idea of what comes next. We don’t know how good they are and how much has been down to ineffectual management. We don’t know who – or how many – will arrive in January and neither do the current playing staff. We don’t know whether Emery was short-changed during his spell at Arsenal or he short-changed them. Perhaps it all depends on how much he can control.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3BF9uXs
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