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Before they decided to sack him as manager, Arsenal wanted to offer Unai Emery a new contract.
That was in the summer following his first season with the club, with the hierarchy at the Emirates pleased with what he had achieved in his first 12 months in North London, including reaching the final of the Europa League.
That was despite missing on Champions League football twice – once with a dismal end of season run that saw them take just eight points from their last 21, slipping out of the top four in the process, and then suffering the humiliation at the hands of Chelsea in the UEFA League final in Baku.
In the end the club decided to wait to see how Emery’s second season at the club developed, and he presided over a run that ultimately cost him his job.
Now, looking back, he has identified one game where things started to go wrong for him, saying “The game against Sheffield United was a bit of a turning point. In one month, everything got broken.
“We were incapable of winning a game in seven and the tension based on the question we were asking ‘what’s happening to us?’ was like a rolling ball that was just getting bigger and bigger.”
Andy is an exiled English football fan living in Cyprus. He loves all sports but football is his abiding passion, and he still has dreams every now and then about scoring the winning goal in a Wembley Cup Final, even though his playing days are long gone. He follows most major leagues, across Europe at least, and has a favoured team in each. When he’s not watching, listening, reading or downloading podcasts about football, he spend his time worrying about his beloved Arsenal.