No gentle introduction for new Arsenal coach Emery

London :There will be no gentle introduction to Premier League football for Arsenal manager Unai Emery as he begins the task of steering the club into a brave new post-Arsene Wenger world.
Looming on the horizon for the Spaniard is an opening-day home game against last year’s runaway champions Manchester City. Then it’s a trip across town to Chelsea.
Hardly a honeymoon period. But then again Emery always knew that leaving mega-rich Paris St Germain for the most unforgiving league in Europe would be full-on from day one.
Arsenal fans in their mid 20s and younger are unlikely to have any recollection of a season kicking off without Wenger at the helm. Even the older generations must have thought change would never come before the Frenchman finally stepped aside at the end of last season and was replaced by Emery.
While Wenger will always command reverence at Arsenal, even from those who ran out of patience with the Frenchman in the latter years of his 22-year reign, there is a genuine excitement about the build-up to the new season.
Emery actually comes with a much more impressive track record than Wenger boasted when he arrived to questions of ‘Arsene Who?’. He won three successive Europa Leagues with Sevilla and last year landed a domestic treble with PSG.
In terms of the challenge that lies ahead it is not dissimilar to what Wenger inherited in 1996 — a club in need of a kickstart after stalling on the pitch.
The trouble is the competition in the top-six of England’s top tier has never been fiercer and pushing the Gunners up from the sixth position they finished last season and back into the Champions League will be a devilishly tough assignment.
Emery will certainly not fail for lack of preparation and attention to detail. Unlike Wenger’s more hand’s-off approach, the Spaniard is well-known for his devotion to painstaking preparation, post-match analysis and belief in marginal gains.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Kashmir Monitor staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)