According to The Guardian, Laurent Blanc’s agent has confirmed that he will leave the club at the end of the week which is a major shake up at the club considering that they won back to back domestic trebles in the past two seasons.
Unai Emery is heavy favourite to replace him after his departure from Sevilla where he was replaced by Jorge Sampaoli. He left the club after winning three Europa Leagues in a row which is a record for the competition, and helped Sevilla to reaffirm their status as one of the major clubs in Spain.
PSG see success in the Champions League as the ultimate aim due to how much they dominate the domestic scene, and Emery’s experience as well as his success in Europe suggests he is the one of the best managers for the job.
The only foreseeable problem being that Sevilla were knocked out in the group stages of the Champions League last season which suggests that Emery’s speciality might be the Europa League, but it seems likely that they were never too focused on doing well in that due to the limits of the team. They also had a group that contained: Juventus, Manchester City and Borussia Monchengladbach, so qualification was always going to be hard from that group.
The removal of Blanc is harsh after all the trophies he has won for the club in his three year stint, but the owners of PSG have high demands and are certainly ambitious to say the least. This does give another club a good opportunity to obtain the services of an experienced and skilled manager, so it wouldn’t be a surprise to hear his name mentioned around any vacancies in major clubs especially when big teams like A.C. Milan are looking for a manager.
Emery will have a few problems to deal with if he does take the job with the major one being somehow replacing the legendary figure of Zlatan Ibrahimovic. They do have another quality striker in Edinson Cavani, but they may feel need to spend some money in the transfer market as a statement of intent.
There is also the absence of Monchi working his magic behind the scenes that Emery will have been used to, although the lack of a stringent budget opens up much more potential markets and players for him to look in to, so it will be interesting to see if he makes any big money moves if he does take the job.
