EMERY’S SEASON ON KNIFE-EDGE AFTER PATHETIC DISPLAY
BATE come off nine-week break to stun Arsenal
ANIGHT of humiliation for Arsenal. Unai Emery was appointed the club’s manager to clear up the mess left behind by Arsene Wenger. On this evidence, the Spaniard has not even found the vacuum cleaner yet.
After nine months in charge, it is hard to see where true progress has been made.
They are still weak in defence, underlined by the way Stanislav Dragun headed home BATE Borisov’s winner. And not for the first time, Arsenal lacked invention in attack.
After a season that began so promisingly, Emery’s first campaign is in danger of imploding.
Arsenal should count themselves lucky they have next week’s second leg to dig themselves out of this hole.
But they don’t deserve a second chance after this lifeless showing which lacked any semblance of integrity against a side who had not played a competitive match since December 12.
Clubs the size of Arsenal don’t lose to sides like BATE, right? Well, apparently, they do.
And what’s more, they only have themselves to blame. The Europa League has taken on huge significance for Arsenal, not that you’d know it by this pathetic display.
Reaching the Champions League remains the be-all-and-end-all for Emery. They’re a point behind Manchester United in the race for fourth place in the Premier League but the way United are hurtling along, at least domestically, you can’t see them relinquishing their grip on the final Champions League qualification slot.
With that in mind, Emery fielded a strong line- up with Granit Xhaka, Alexandre Lacazette and Henrikh Mkhitaryan included from the start.
The bench wasn’t bad either — Pierre- Emerick Aubameyang, Denis Suarez and Lucas Torreira all on stand-by in case the going got tough. That didn’t matter a jot. They could have been playing all at the same time and it would not have made a difference.
On that note, a penny for Mesut Ozil’s thoughts this morning? Yet again, there was no place for the German, the club’s top earner left in England despite completing two full days of training after missing Saturday’s 2-1 win over Huddersfield through illness.
How Ozil’s future resolves itself in the coming months will dictate how Arsenal’s summer goes. If, as planned, they can sell their mercurial misfit, they will release £350,000 off the weekly wage bill, giving Emery more to play with in the transfer market.
So, it begs the question: why on earth was the club’s most creative player sitting at home in London when his team-mates were being embarrassed 1,200 miles away in Belarus?
An early goal would have settled any early nerves, but Mkhitaryan and Lacazette missed brilliant chances to ease the tension and instead Arsenal’s night turned into a nightmare.
Having won here in the Europa League group stages last season, Arsenal, at least in theory, knew what it took to succeed in Belarus.
How wrong that assumption turned out to be.
But having said that, only four of yesterday’s match- day squad made the trip to Borisov last season, such is the change that has swept through the Emirates Stadium over the past 18 months. Emery’s task is to ensure those changes amount to something tangible. That looks like mission impossible right now.
This was far from Arsenal in full flow. More stuttering than stunning, but a run of seven defeats in their last 14 games underlines their mediocrity.
That’s life for Emery right now. His job is to resolve those frailties whilst picking up results to keep Arsenal in contention for Champions League qualification. But here he — and his team — failed miserably.
The crucial moment arrived on the stroke of half-time. Dragun wheeled away in celebration after thumping a header from Igor Stasevich’s free-kick past goalkeeper Petr Cech.
In the aftermath, Arsenal’s defence just stood looking at each other. It is a shame that no- one looked hard enough to spot Dragun as he rose above everyone.
Arsenal did have the ball in the net in the 56th minute, Lacazette firing home Sead Kolasinac’s cross, but the effort was rightly ruled out for offside.
Emery had seen enough, making a double substitution in the 68th minute with Aubameyang and Torreira replacing Ainsley MaitlandNiles and Xhaka, before Denis Suarez came on for Kolasinac to make his European debut for Arsenal.
But not even the cavalry could rescue the turgid Gunners.
And to top off their awful night, Lacazette was shown a straight red card for a clear and intentional elbow on Aleksandar Filipovic, which will result in an automatic one-match ban.
But Lacazette’s suspension for Thursday’s second leg was the least of Emery’s worries last night. He has far bigger and more pressing issues to address.