Former Arsenal defender Carl Jenkinson says a lot of people do not know the real side of Unai Emery, and praises their relationship during their time at the club.
Jenkinson came through the Charlton Athletic academy before joining Arsenal in 2011. Unai Emery took over the club in 2018 off the back of his successful spell with Sevilla where the Spaniard won three Europa League trophies.
Jenkinson only featured in around 41 games for Arsenal in his eight years at the club, but singles out Unai Emery for how well he related to the players.
Unai Emery is a great man manager – Jenkinson
The defender spoke about a meeting with Emery back in 2019, when Jenkinson wanted to leave the club due to playing time.
Jenkinson narrated how Unai Emery took him on the pre season tour to get him some minutes so that clubs could evaluate him during the transfer window.
The defender was speaking on Ben Foster’s Fozcast podcast:
“In pre-season, it’s a time where you’re playing games and players can be watched, you know, and if players like – it happens a lot in pre-season, managers will go ‘Oh you’re not in my squad, I don’t want you’.”
“Pre-season games are a shop window as well, so if a player has actually been left behind and then no one sees them throughout pre-season, it makes it, they’ll think ‘Oh, you’re forcing me out’, it’s actually making it even harder for them to find a club. I always remember towards the end of my time at Arsenal, I knew that I needed to find a solution because I wasn’t going to play much and the writing was kind of on the wall.”
Jenkinson said the conversation became more frank and straightforward when Emery told him he would not be part of the plans that season:
“We were going away for pre-season, and it was under Unai Emery, and I think I actually went into his office, like on the first day back for preseason. I said like – because we had had a conversation at the end of the season before – and he said ‘Look I’ll be honest, you’re not going to play much for me this season’.
Jenkinson grateful for pre season tour
The defender then narrated how his performances on the pre season tour got some interest from another club, who called his agent:
“So I said ‘Okay, cool’, do you know what I mean, I’ll look for another club, I appreciate your honesty. So I went in and I said ‘Unai, I could really do with coming on this pre-season’, he might have been like taking me anyway, but I just wanted to let him know, because as I said it’s a shop window for me, it’s a time for me to show what I can do for other clubs who will be watching.
“He said ‘Oh, don’t worry, yeah, you’re coming on the tour’. I went on the tour, we played Real Madrid in America. I wasn’t starting, I think Ainsley Maitland-Niles had like a back spasm or something just before kick-off, so I got drafted in. I had a worldie game, played really, really well and then all of a sudden a phone call started ringing, my agent saying like ‘Oh you know mate, you were unreal last night’ and then I moved on [from Arsenal].”
