The longer Arsenal’s week-long pre-season trip to Singapore wore on in 2018, the worse Unai Emery’s English got.
It was fine the day he delivered one of his first public utterances as the Gunners’ new manager at Singapore American School. But, five days later, so garbled were his words as he previewed the game against Paris Saint-Germain that the Daily Mirror’s sports desk were told the words they’d soon be seeing were ‘s***’.
The consensus when the article landed back in London was that they ‘weren’t that good’, so limited was the content. And what we didn’t know then but would soon learn was that Emery’s inability to communicate very well in English would become one of the defining aspects of his stay in north London.
