I want him to succeed, but starting to lose confidence in Emery’s suitability for the situation we are in, but will give him till at least March to see if he can turns things around. The unbeaten run, while welcome, was greeted with cautious optimism as we could see through the results and understand that our general play was pretty mixed which was expected early into his tenure. Unfortunately winning a few games at the beginning of the job doesn’t necessarily mean that someone is the right candidate for the job long-term (extreme example Pardew). Tactics develop over a season but so do measures to counter by other teams. Injuries have certainly not helped him recently, but again, these things happen and can only be excused to a point. Reckon that even though people at the top will be patient, some of our transfer budget may be held back for any severance required to dismiss him and his backroom staff.
We do not have the funds to splurge for wish-list players in this transfer window at the very least, so we need a coach that can elevate this existing squad. Realistic targets are not going to be so much better than what we have as we can’t afford to compete on transfers. Failure to reach the Champions League again, will cement the limitations we already have in funds and attractiveness for the kind of players needed to close the gap on those above us. This situation must have been evident when we hired Emery, so if he cannot improve the team within those parameters, we need to find someone who can, otherwise why waste time.
I accept that Kopp, Guardiola and others have required more than a season to instil their system with their players, but they were also backed with big transfer kitties to realise that vision and were to some extent beneficiaries of good fortune (e.g. Coutinho transfer). Unfortunately, I don’t think we have the luxury to be that patient as we are not going to outspend anyone above us. For me that means under Emery, the team needs to have strong second half of the season as results are the only sure way to convince players to have faith in his methods. We are in a bad patch and with difficult games coming up, there is a chance morale can fall further if we lose much more. Once the players stop believing, there will be no second season.
