Unai Emery has been trending on Twitter in the aftermath of Arsenal's defeat in the North London derby.

Read LA Lewis, the author of the important new book Brave New World, a detailed anaylsis of the Emery era, as he studies the boss who came after Arsene Wenger. 

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It's been just over a year since Arsenal sacked Unai Emery, and it's not a generalisation to say the majority of supporters haven't missed the Spanish coach.

His Arsenal legacy will be the dismal run of form that ended his tenure, in addition to the lack of coherent football throughout his fifteen months in charge.

His name will not invoke happy memories, though maybe in time, some fans will view his disappointing reign as a necessary stopgap following the twenty-two year dynasty that preceded it. 

Yet that wasn't the overriding feeling in August 2018 when Emery took charge of Arsenal for the first time. Despite the most difficult opening fixture list any Premier League debutant has faced, the mood among supporters was one of excitement and anticipation at the prospect of something new and unknown. 

Intrigued at the thought of a new dawn, and anticipating a season of dramatic importance as Arsenal ventured down a different path, I decided to create a real-time record of Emery's debut season, which ultimately became a book, Brave New World. 

I followed every game, every press conference, every news story, and recorded what was a rollercoaster season for Arsenal, where the drama off the pitch was often as newsworthy as the performances on it. 

I wrote about the genuine sense of hope accompanied the new manager, aided by the addition of a new executive structure, sold to supporters as the chief scout from Borussia Dortmund and Barcelona's principal dealmaker. 

Gazidis hard sell

So regardless of attachment to Arsene Wenger, it was hard not to be enthused by the hard sell from Ivan Gazidis, especially when Arsenal spent the summer of 2018 tying up their transfer dealings in uncharacteristically early fashion.

A front four of Ozil, Ramsey, Lacazette and Aubameyang was as exciting a prospect of anything else in the league, particularly when Arsenal added the steel of Leno, Sokratis and Torreira to our ranks. 

Looking back at reports of the twenty two match unbeaten run at the beginning of Emery's reign, it's clear that supporters were backing Emery to deliver, and were willing to give him time to fulfil his vision.

One revelation that seems glaring when revisiting each game's real time report, was how desperate we were, as supporters, to see signs of progress.

His half time substitutions were lauded as bold and proactive at the beginning of his reign, much like his regular formation changes, but by the end those same traits were labelled as proof that the manager didn't know how to pick the correct starters.

Where his pragmatism was initially revered, it soon became a stick to beat him with

One wonders if Emery had his time again, whether he would use the term 'pragmatists' in his opening press conference when describing how he wanted Arsenal to play.

As the season wore on, it became clear Arsenal were set up as 'reactavists' who tailored their approach too heavily to the opposition. 

It's also fair to point out that succeeding Wenger would be a tall order for any manager. Few other coaches are able to marry free-flowing football with top four finishes like Arsenal's longest serving manager, so fans were rightly underwhelmed by the brand of stoic, cautionary, and often dull football that Emery served up. 

Emery era analysed

Despite that unbeaten run, undoubtedly the highlight of his Arsenal tenure, we all know it ultimately went wrong, and revisionism won't be as forgiving to Emery as it has been to other former managers.

Graham and Wenger have trophy success to fall back on, while even Bruce Rioch had the signing of Dennis Bergkamp to distract from the football. 

Yet what most have forgotten when evaluating Emery is the mitigating circumstances. While he is certainly to blame for the mixed messaging on the pitch, he did have to contend with an awful lot away from it.

I've seen it written that current manager Mikel Arteta has had to contend with unrivalled distractions in his nascent reign, but Emery was equally shackled by constant disruptions.

If there was a handbook on how to replace a legacy manager with omnipresent control, then Arsenal misread the signals.  

Gazidis decisions 

Gazidis awarded an astounding contract to Mesut Ozil five months before removing Wenger, without knowing the identity of the new manager, or whether the two would be compatible.

He then allegedly agreed a deal with Arsenal's most in-form player, Aaron Ramsey, which was eventually retracted, forcing Emery to look beyond the Welsh wonder when building his new team.

Gazidis then departed himself, mere months after appointing Emery, quickly followed by Sven Mislintat. Three first team players suffered season ending inuries - Bellerin, Holding and Welbeck - and weren't replaced, while every fixture was dominated by questions surrounding Ozil's inclusion or omission. 

Looking back over that season now, it's incredible to observe just how much the Mesut Ozil situation dominated the news agenda, and it's both tiresome and startling that nearly two years on, the club's star player is still the subject of considerable conjecture. 

Soap opera 

With every month there seemed to be a new crisis for Emery to deal with or address, maybe that's just modern football, or more of an Arsenal centric thing, and his attempt to strengthen the squad in January resulted in Arsenal's most pointless signing of recent memory, Denis Suarez.

Arsenal then reportedly offered their director of football job to Emery's former boss, Monchi, and one can only speculate as to the state of the club now had Monchi accepted the offer. 

On the pitch

On the pitch, truly rancid performances were served up away to Bate Borisov and Rennes, whilst victories over Chelsea and Man Utd in the league hinted at a corner turned.

It was often a case of one step forward, two steps back. Yet while Champions League qualification hung in the balance, in two competitions, it felt like the mood was still one that backed the coach, or at least advocated for him to be given more time to get it right. 

So near yet so far

Emery was only one point, or one team selection, away from securing Champions League football in his debut season.

The fine margins of Aubameyang scoring a last minute penalty vs Spurs, or Xhaka not needlessly giving away a penalty vs Brighton in the penultimate fixture, or picking a stronger XI to start in the home defeat vs Crystal Palace, would've meant a successful first season for the new coach.

Emery also guided Arsenal to their first European final in thirteen years, which is an achievement in itself, regardless of the abomination of the final. 

Emery assessed

So it's easy to sit back in hindsight and view Emery's reign as an abject failure, but the club also failed in both selecting the right candidate to follow Wenger, and then providing that candidate with a stable platform to thrive.

Emery is a talented coach, and will most likely taste success with Villarreal - he seems to thrive at Spanish clubs just below superclub status, as his spells with Sevilla and Valencia prove - so it's with considerable regret that Arsenal didn't get the best from him.  

Of course he isn't blameless, and the turgid performances away at Brighton, West Ham and Everton were amongst the worst in living memory.

Watching his Arsenal side happy to settle for a point at Brighton felt at odds with the stature of the two clubs, and there was always the impression that just like PSG, a club like Arsenal was a poor fit for a conservative coach deploying underdog tactics.  

So it feels entirely lamentable that having spent all of the summer 2018 confident in the knowledge that Emery wasn't Arsenal's version of David Moyes following Alex Ferguson, that two and a half years later, Emery seems nothing but a timestamp between the old dynasty and the new one.

If Houston and Rioch was needed to bridge Graham and Wenger, perhaps Emery was required to separate Wenger and Arteta.

Lost time

The sadness is that Arsenal eventually chose the same candidate they came so close to appointing eighteen months earlier, and as a club we essentially wasted fifteen months, and countless resources, supporting a regime that was doomed to fail from the moment Gazidis accepted the offer from AC Milan. 

Every season at Arsenal feels like a rollercoaster, and the hope is that Arteta will bring back the routine normalcy of Champions League qualification, and more, but Emery's debut season was the first step in Arsenal moving away from the traditional 'manager-is-king' philosophy and towards a more modern structure.

His reign should be viewed with both caution, criticism, but also sympathy.  

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Brave New World by LA Lewis is out now, and would make an ideal Christmas present, or book distraction during lockdown.

Buy LA Lewis' book on Unai Emery and Arsenal Brave New World 

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