How Will Arsenal Fare in New Boss Emery’s First Season?

How Will Arsenal Fare in New Boss Emery’s First Season?

With their main transfer business seemingly concluded early, Arsenal are giving new manager Unai Emery every chance of kicking off the post-Arsene Wenger era well.


The Spaniard certainly seems happy with summer recruitment, but the new faces at the Emirates Stadium will need to hit the ground running as the Gunners’ first two Premier League games are at home to defending champions Manchester City and then away at London rivals Chelsea.

“We signed the players who we needed,” Emery told the BBC as he spoke about the need for multiple leaders in the dressing room. “The club has done a great job of signing new players and I am happy.”

Arsenal’s additions to the first team have mainly been in defensive areas, but that is not surprising after they spent over £100 million in the two previous transfer windows on overhauling attacking options.

Alexandre Lacazette and then Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang arrived at the Emirates last season both as the Gunners’ record signings, while Henrikh Mkhitaryan was a swap for Alexis Sanchez with Manchester United.

In this window, Arsenal have brought in Switzerland right back and captain Stephan Lichtsteiner, German goalkeeper Bernd Leno, Greece defender Sokratis Papastathopoulos, Uruguay midfielder Lucas Torreira and France youth international Matteo Guendozi.

Emery can’t have thought much about his options at the back, though is keeping continuity with his predecessor after highlighting Laurent Koscielny as “first captain”.


“Laurent Koscielny” (CC BY 2.0) by Ronnie Macdonald

Now equipped with the signings he needed, all eyes are on how this new Gunners gaffer will get results and whether the players drafted in will perform.

Trying to predict the outcome for a team like Arsenal, who are under different leadership for the first time in over two decades, is a challenge and the bookies go 21/10 that Emery gets them back into the top four.

That should immediately be qualified in terms of their price not to finish in the Champions League places. The Gunners are odds-on here at 5/14, which is just the right side of 1/3.

Oddsmakers don’t believe Emery can make an immediate improvement then and, given how David Moyes got on when trying to follow in Sir Alex Ferguson’s footsteps at Manchester United after a quarter of a century at Old Trafford, it’s easy to see why.

Arsenal are also sixth-favourites to be Premier League champions for the first time since 2004 at 25/1, yet odds-on at 4/19 (that’s just better than 1/5) to finish in the top six again.

If the bookies can’t see Emery cracking the top four straight away, then nor do they see the Spaniard flopping entirely at the Emirates and maintaining them as a team that qualifies for Europe is expected.

This is also the Gunners’ second consecutive season in the Europa League and under Wenger they reached the semis last term, losing to winners Atletico Madrid.

Plenty of column inches have already been dedicated to Emery’s record in this competition, as he landed a hat-trick of Europa crowns at Sevilla between 2014 and 2016 before moving on to PSG.

Winning this other European competition does, of course, bring with it the perk of a backdoor route into the Champions League, so given how their new manager has successfully targeted it before, Arsenal are among the favourites to win it.