Unai Emery is, he insists, a self-critical man. When he comes to reflect on the loss of his Arsenal job he says that he must bear at least some of the burden for a reign that sputtered into life in fits and starts but ended with the Gunners swiftly reversing down the road he was supposed to be taking them along.
"There were decisions that didn’t go well," he said in an interview with the Guardian and the Daily Mail. "Mistakes were made, and as coach I take responsibility for mine."
Those mistakes include: The decision to allow four captains to leave in the summer of 2019, the failure to sign Wilfried Zaha, Aaron Ramsey's injury, Mesut Ozil's attitude and commitment, the failure from the club hierarchy to offer him support and his players' inability in the final days of his tenure to show him "the team I want".
What do all those have in common? Emery can insist they were not his fault.
Ozil might have proven to be a player whose quality can be tapped by other head coaches, even a rookie such as Mikel Arteta, but Emery indicated in his interview that it was the former Germany international who needed to look upon himself.
"He has to be self‑critical too, analyse his attitude and commitment," Emery insisted. As to whether the Spaniard is now reflecting on why he seems to have such issues managing star players such as Neymar and Ozil, we can only speculate.
At this juncture it should be noted that Emery had the board's full backing in sidelining Ozil, indeed it was an agreed club policy. The problem he had with his No.10 was that he seemed unable to stick to his principles, to move Arsenal decisively on from their best-paid player.
Ozil's starting spot was rarely guaranteed but he never had to wait long to be brought in from the cold. The longest streak Emery went without starting the World Cup winner was six games.
Unquestionably fate dealt Emery a tough hand at the start of his second season at Arsenal. Off the field there was the incident involving Ozil and Sead Kolasinac and Laurent Koscielny's strike. On it he lost Alexandre Lacazette to a pre-season injury that would disrupt much of the early weeks of the campaign.
Yet Emery seems to see himself as a passenger to these circumstances, unable to shape the course of the club or set the tone. In the late summer and early autumn the Arsenal head coach was deliberately painting a picture of him as being out of control at the club: unable to name a captain, to keep and sign the players he wanted or implement his footballing plans.
It is perhaps most notable that when Emery insists he takes responsibility for what he got wrong at Arsenal - more on that later - he then identifies the departure of players with a combined 1,112 appearances in the space of a few weeks as a key cause of Arsenal's relative decline.
"For example, all four captains left. Ramsey had decided he was going. It would have been better for the team if he had continued, and for me. Petr Cech was retiring; fine.
"But I wanted Laurent Koscielny to stay, Nacho Monreal to stay. All those leaders went, which makes the dressing room something else."
He is right. Arsenal's defence may have begun the season more effectively with the steadying influence of Koscielny and Monreal rather than the error-prone Kolasinac (who Emery himself had urged the Arsenal hierarchy to keep) and David Luiz thrown in at the deep end.
Certainly Emery made no secret over his frustration at losing Koscielny, Monreal and Henrikh Mkhitaryan at the time. Delaying his captaincy vote over fears that the latter two might somehow muddy the process seemed like a way to cut off his nose to spit his face.
What ought to infuriate Raul Sanllehi, who had publicly backed Emery to his own detriment, is the implication that the head coach was somehow a passenger to these decisions taken above him, particularly where Koscielny is concerned.
After all the Frenchman opted to return to his homeland at least partly because he felt he had been overplayed after returning from an Achilles injury midway through the 2018/19 season. Equally Emery's inability to impose his authority on a dressing room, which would become blindingly obvious when he could not elicit an apology from Granit Xhaka for swearing at his own fans, was clear to see when Koscielny felt empowered to go on strike and demand Arsenal rip up his contract.
It is not only the outgoings that Emery seems insistent to blame for his side's poor start with the decision to buy Nicolas Pepe over Zaha one that clearly still rankles with the head coach. Again Sanllehi might well ask his former colleague how he would have invested £72million: put the vast majority up front for a player who, approaching 27, would have little resale value after his first contract or invest it in more favourable terms with a lower down payment for Pepe, just turned 24?
Emery can hang his sophomore slump on signing Pepe but it is the Arsenal man who leads the pair in goals and assists. Both players have endured disappointing season and it is probable that if Zaha had finally got the move to a top six club he craved he would have been more like the player who carried Crystal Palace in 2017/18 and the following season.
He would still, however, have been returning from a gruelling Africa Cup of Nations campaign, just as Pepe was. He may not have been the wrecking ball through the Premier League that his suitor is so convinced he would have been.
Most amusing of all is Emery's suggestion that Zaha had beaten Arsenal single-handedly at the Emirates in the match that set the Gunners on the downward spiral that saw them snatch fifth from the jaws of Champions League qualification.
Was it Zaha that named a starting XI that included Carl Jenkinson, Konstantinos Mavropanos, Mohamed Elneny and Shkodran Mustafi? Did the Crystal Palace winger hold his best players in reserve for far tougher games away to Wolverhampton Wanderers and Leicester City, sacrificing three probable points for games Arsenal were unlikely to win whoever they fielded?
Throughout that run-in Emery seemed obsessed with the Europa League, continually naming stronger sides for the European games than the league matches that surrounded him. It seemed to evade his notice that he was putting Arsenal in a position where it was 90 minutes or bust at a time when their top four rivals continually allowed them to get away with their on-field errors.
No-one else was responsible for the team selection against Crystal Palace and Brighton, the self-inflicted wounds that scarred Arsenal's first season of the post-Arsene Wenger era. Circumstances kept making it easier for Emery to secure a top four finish. Emery kept making it harder for Emery to secure a top four finish.
If Emery's over-riding conclusion from the way his season fell apart is that matters were out of his control then there is much more self-criticism for him to do.
