The Sports Buff ⚽️ ⚾️ 🏈

Hello, good morning, boys and girls. I hope you’re well and in good health. We need to talk about football and, more precisely, football managers. The football player is depicted as someone who lives the high life off the pitch, with a carefree approach to life on the whole.

For all the glamour of the football player, the stresses and pressures of the football manager offset that. One of the reasons for that is the lack of appreciation they get.

If the players have a good performance, oh, that’s the players in inspired form, but if they don’t, oh, that’s the manager; he hasn’t improved them, his methods aren’t working, and he should be sacked.

Here I want to give you an example of one of these managers, who, on the pretence, will get disrespected, as that’s what comes with the territory, but in the case of Unai Emery, he will get disrespected more than most.

The Spaniard’s time at Arsenal and PSG is used as a stick to beat him with. That is harsh, but this is the way football fans are. Here, in our series on the most disrespected managers, I want to mention another manager who should be on the list: Unai Emery.

Formerly of Valencia, Sevilla, Villarreal, and Arsenal, Emery is, when you look closely, a tactical genius. With the Spanish side Villarreal, I had never seen a side so well marshalled. The way the Yellow Submarine played the offside trap, bravo, bravo!

So he is a pragmatist then? Nope. Unai Emery is a tactically flexible manager; he knows how to utilise the tools he has. Before you try to do the PSG bashing, just stop. Current manager Luis Enrique couldn’t hack it either.

When the former Barcelona coach had Kylian Mbappe at his disposal, he opted to sell the forward. That decision has boosted PSG’s team choesion. Five Europa Leagues (a record) and the ability to get Villareal to punch above their weight and make Aston Villa consistently succesful, shouldn’t go under appreciated.

He’s got money to spend they say? Yawn. Sports fans, with there being the introduction of something called FFP, then you should know the skills needed to sell players, to balance the balance sheets.

The Villains have done that superbly this term. The Midlands club have essentially ripped up the scrapbook and have nearly started again, almost. Oli Watkins, Morgan Rodgers, Ezri Konsa and Emi Martinez, are players who have left Villa Park.

This would break most other managers, but not Unai. The easiest laziest thing fans can do now is look at the current Premier League table. It reads that Aston Villa are yet to win, but the season is just two games old, perspective people, perspective!