The Unai Emery Thread | Page 188 | Vital Football

The Unai Emery Thread

BodyButter said:
Steve Bruce saved us from relegation to League One.
Click to expand...


He gets way to much credit for that in my opinion. Only a complete incompetent would have had us down the bottom all season with the team we had even then. Bruce is certainly not that, at least in the championship anyway.

Not getting promoted the next season is why is see him as a failure as Villa manager. We should have walked automatic promotion with that team.
 
Bruce was a failure here, he failed to get us promoted and left Smith with a shit show squad that required Smith to work miracles to get us promoted. He also split the fan base by singling out fans who were unhappy with his horrible football and lack of delivery as “hysterical”.

Any half competent manager would have “steadied the ship” in that first season.
 
I’m in the Bruce definitely steadied the ship camp and was the right person to do it. Yes, someone else may have but fact is Bruce did. We were a fucking mess under RDM.

I think the moment it went wrong was the play of final against the Ruperts. However, we all know that was in the end the best result as we would have not got Wes/Nas. I think that season was acceptable in terms of up to that point bearing in mind it was actually his first full season. So it’s kind of 50/50. Did the initial job but ultimately failed and the change was absolutely correct and on the cards as soon as Wes/Nas arrived.

Keeping it onto Unai though. The progression from Bruce- Smith and now Unai is exactly what I wanted when we got promoted as the latter is the top level we needed to strive towards to compete at the top end.
 
JW1985 said:
He gets way to much credit for that in my opinion. Only a complete incompetent would have had us down the bottom all season with the team we had even then. Bruce is certainly not that, at least in the championship anyway.

Not getting promoted the next season is why is see him as a failure as Villa manager. We should have walked automatic promotion with that team.
Click to expand...

We were going down (again) because of a long series of incompetent managers. In my book, it wasn't just DiMatteo. It was everyone since MON until Bruce came in and saved us.

Smith was an improvement on Bruce and Unai is an upgrade on Smith.

I'd put Bruce in the 3/5 category. I'd put a lot of managers lower than him. Competence in football management is surprisingly rare.
 
Last edited:
My view is and always will be that the steadying of the ship that he's always credited with was the absolute minimum expected at the time. We had plenty of time left in the season to make a promotiom charge and he was allowed to sign loads of players in January of whom only one turned out to be any good.

Second season we should have walked automatic promotion. After our home win vs Blues, our 7th win in a row, we sat second. We then proceeded to bottle it and ended up 4th then bottled the final.

By the time he was rightfully sacked he'd completely lost the plot. Only 2 CBs one of whom he played at RB and our best keeper sent on loan. In the end his reign wasn't successful and in reality it's a good job it wasn't as who knows what would have happened if we'd won that play off final. Can you imagine the carnage a premier league campaign under Bruce with Dr Tony running the club.
 
JW1985 said:
My view is and always will be that the steadying of the ship that he's always credited with was the absolute minimum expected at the time. We had plenty of time left in the season to make a promotiom charge and he was allowed to sign loads of players in January of whom only one turned out to be any good.

Second season we should have walked automatic promotion. After our home win vs Blues, our 7th win in a row, we sat second. We then proceeded to bottle it and ended up 4th then bottled the final.

By the time he was rightfully sacked he'd completely lost the plot. Only 2 CBs one of whom he played at RB and our best keeper sent on loan. In the end his reign wasn't successful and in reality it's a good job it wasn't as who knows what would have happened if we'd won that play off final. Can you imagine the carnage a premier league campaign under Bruce with Dr Tony running the club.
Click to expand...
I really think we’d be in receivership or even out of business if we’d gone up that season. Fulham spent £100m and stank up the league with 26 points with three wins late in the season, just imagine what would have happened to us.
 
BodyButter said:
We were going down (again) because of a long series of incompetent managers. In my book, it wasn't just DiMatteo. It was everyone since MON until Bruce came in and saved us.

Smith was an improvement on Bruce and Unai is an upgrade on Smith.

I'd put Bruce in the 3/5 category. I'd put a lot of managers lower than him. Competence in football management is surprisingly rare.
Click to expand...
Yeah we were headed to League 1 . The club was rotten. Bruce steadied the ship and turned it around and back in the right direction.
 
I do find it amusing how Unai plays down our chances even of top 7 (or at least that's how I interpreted it). Says Man U and even Chelsea :lol: are still favourites to get there over us. I get United to a degree as even when they are a mess they still find ways to fluke wins throughout the season usually through a moment of magic so can see them finishing above us potentially even if they don't deserve it. But Chelsea I think will be a long way behind, they might scrape into the top half and get 50 odd points but that's it. Nowhere near the Chelsea of old.

I can understand why he does it as he doesn't want to put undue pressure on us, and I also think he's respectful of other teams so sometimes overcompliments them, but surely he doesn't believe what he's saying when he thinks we 'aren't a contender for top 7'. We're a contender for top 4 with all Spurs' injuries/suspensions and most definitely a contender for top 7, in fact if we don't finish top 7 then something has seriously gone wrong in the 2nd half of the season.
 
MrLoverLover said:
I do find it amusing how Unai plays down our chances even of top 7 (or at least that's how I interpreted it). Says Man U and even Chelsea :lol: are still favourites to get there over us. I get United to a degree as even when they are a mess they still find ways to fluke wins throughout the season usually through a moment of magic so can see them finishing above us potentially even if they don't deserve it. But Chelsea I think will be a long way behind, they might scrape into the top half and get 50 odd points but that's it. Nowhere near the Chelsea of old.

I can understand why he does it as he doesn't want to put undue pressure on us, and I also think he's respectful of other teams so sometimes overcompliments them, but surely he doesn't believe what he's saying when he thinks we 'aren't a contender for top 7'. We're a contender for top 4 with all Spurs' injuries/suspensions and most definitely a contender for top 7, in fact if we don't finish top 7 then something has seriously gone wrong in the 2nd half of the season.
Click to expand...
Yanited get wins through help from officials & VAR rather than through a moment of magic!!!
 
Silhillvilla said:
MON did pretty well, 3 6th placed finishes , just couldn't move us beyond that and hit his glass ceiling
Click to expand...
MON did very well, but, he's nowhere near as good as Unai.

Under MON, we were a great away team, but, when the bottom half sides came to the Shrine, they sat back & waited to see how we could do in taking the game to them, we couldn't, as he had no plan B.

Remember games where Big John Carew was totally ineffective & Brain of Britain came up with the master plan of replacing the useless lump with ......................................... another useless lump, enter Emile Heskey!!! What a difference that would make.

Also, Marlon Harewood, Habib Beye & selling Gary Cahill to replace with Curtis Davies.
 
Morley WithenShaw said:
MON did very well, but, he's nowhere near as good as Unai.

Under MON, we were a great away team, but, when the bottom half sides came to the Shrine, they sat back & waited to see how we could do in taking the game to them, we couldn't, as he had no plan B.

Remember games where Big John Carew was totally ineffective & Brain of Britain came up with the master plan of replacing the useless lump with ......................................... another useless lump, enter Emile Heskey!!! What a difference that would make.

Also, Marlon Harewood, Habib Beye & selling Gary Cahill to replace with Curtis Davies.
Click to expand...
i agree , he lost the plot in the end and could not work out how to crack the top 5.
So far Emery has got us to a 7th place finish, can he get us into the top 5 and do what MON couldn't ? I think he can .
 
I'll never have a bad word said against Bruce. We were a complete mess. It's easy to say any manager could have steadied the ship but several had tried and failed miserably before him. He actually did it. We could do easily have been another Sheffield Wednesday.

In the end he probably stayed too long, but for that initial work I'll always be grateful.
 
Mon's problem was he couldn't handle a big squad.

His idea was to have 11 brilliant players and a bench of average players happy to be on the bench.

Last thing he wanted was a bench of quality players knocking on his door demanding minutes.
 
sirdennis said:
Way off topic now , but MON should have done far better with the money he was given. Looking back he bought some average players for big money.
Click to expand...


You could have given him the money Peps spent at City and he'd still have signed the same players and played in the same way. We'd just have spent even more on them. We got him in when he was just out of date with his tactics.

If we'd hired him after Gregory left or instead of DoL we'd have won something and probably got into the champions league. But by the time we'd got him English football was become more continental, especially at the top of the table.

Unai is the first manager we've hired since I got a season ticket that's genuinely a current world class manager.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.