Club’s highest earner has underperformed this season and his manager has also left many fans underwhelmed. But the board does not appear to have the conviction to make a hard decisionAs Mesut Özil trudged, head bowed, around the pitch at the end of it all in Baku it was pertinent to wonder what has become of him and where it all goes from here. He is the lost playmaker. His once proud joy in the assist, his once delicate ability to be the subtle architect of a game, has dwindled to the point where it is really worth revisiting a highlights reel from previous years to remember how – even with that idiosyncratic languid style which means he seldom looks...
Unai Emery’s side capitulated against Chelsea and, with such an important summer ahead, the damage may be severeThere was something almost pitiful about Unai Emery gesturing enthusiastically from his technical area, urging his team forwards, in the 90th minute at 4-1 down. He suddenly looked like a footballing King Canute, trying to stem a tide that washed all over Arsenal and left their present and future ambitions shipwrecked.The scale of the capitulation left Arsenal in shock. At the end of it all, the shattering despair felled their players. They had been banking on this, hoping that the Europa League final would bring a happy ending to this season and positivity for the next with a return to the Champions League....
Unai Emery has proved a master of two-leg ties but also has the wherewithal to impose his gameplan in a one-off finalTransition is often a useful excuse for football clubs but in the case of Arsenal and Chelsea it happens to be true. The Europa League final will be a battle of two managers coming to the end of their first season at their respective clubs, both hamstrung by oddly imbalanced squads, and both charged with leading their sides into a bold new era.Maurizio Sarri’s problem, though, is that all Chelsea’s existence since José Mourinho was first removed in 2006 has been transition. Related: Arsenal’s ongoing Champions League absence has not been so costly | David Conn Related: Eden Hazard...
If Gunners refused to contest Europa League showpiece they would generate headlines that might force Uefa into climbdownLeave no man behind. A code embraced by the US military, it refers to army policy of doing everything and anything possible to avoid abandoning troops behind enemy lines. A commendable dictum, despite the accompanying risks, it is one the Arsenal hierarchy may ponder ruefully as their players and backroom staff set off for next week’s Europa League final, leaving one of their own potentially key troops behind before even arriving at the Baku battlefield.In the meantime a “letter voicing their concerns” has been dispatched to Uefa and, at a recent media briefing, Unai Emery made all the right noises about the importance...
They may be foreign-owned corporations featuring few homegrown players but we should celebrate English club successes built on the blurring, not the building, of bordersNous sommes les meilleurs! Wir sind die Besten! We are the cosmopolitan, financially skewed, managerial-outsourcing champions!It turns out the English aren’t coming. Look out of the window. We’re already here, in Madrid and Baku, Porto and Amsterdam, complaining about the milk, circling the cafe chairs, standing arms-spread on the hotel bar, simultaneously drunk on English exceptionalism and also deeply mistrustful of the phrase “English exceptionalism” because it contains a lot of syllables. Related: How English football rules Europe (with a little help from foreigners) Related: Premier League: 10 things to look out for on the final...