Look away Monty and Burney...
Had you been an Arsenal fan at Old Trafford on Wednesday evening it would have been difficult to resist the optimism. This is a feeling the team’s supporters haven’t known for a long time. It wasn’t that the game was of the highest class or that the 2-2 draw was an exceptional result against an unsure Manchester United, rather it was the confirmation that Arsenal are again a proper football team.
After Jose Mourinho’s side scored their second equaliser it was Arsenal’s players who had the greater belief that victory was still possible, and Arsenal who had both the stamina and desire to continue attacking. They fought like they so rarely fought during the second decade of Arsène Wenger’s reign. In five months Unai Emery has brought remarkable change to the team culture.
More than any other Premier League club, it was United who best understood how soft a touch Arsenal had become in Wenger’s latter years. Paul Scholes spoke about it the other evening, recalling the great Arsenal side of Wenger’s first decade at the club and then the gradual fall-off in standards. In the end an opposition only needed to show a little physicality and Arsenal folded their tent.
Winning ways: Unai Emery has done well after replacing Arsene Wenger
Winning ways: Unai Emery has done well after replacing Arsene Wenger
ANDREW ROWLAND
Writing in this newspaper last year Rio Ferdinand said that towards the end of his days at Old Trafford, he and his teammates felt if they ran hard in the opening quarter, Arsenal would run away. In virtually no time, Emery has changed that. At the club’s north London training centre they have seen this coming. Pre-season was like no other. The first thing Emery insisted upon was an expanded indoor fitness facility. Some days there were separate sessions, coaches not leaving the training ground until after 9pm, with first-team players relishing the new routine. That was the surprise, because there had been a feeling that the group was soft and not partial to hard work. Emery significantly increased the training-ground workload and the players have responded in the right way.
The emphasis on fitness has created a mentally stronger team and one that routinely delivers strong second-half performances. More time in the gym and on the training ground and increased intensity in every aspect of their preparation has created a different Arsenal. There will be some tut-tutting at reports that some Arsenal players used laughing gas on an early-season night out and while the club will publicly disapprove, they are privately wondering why the story should emerge more than three months after it happened. The better things go on the pitch, the more likely players will be supported.
Under Wenger, the other coaches at the club felt there was too little delegation and that Steve Bould, for example, was never given enough time to work on how the team defended. Nobody now looks at the first-team squad and thinks they could be doing more. Emery and the coaches who came with him have impressed their new colleagues by constantly consulting with them. This, too, is a change from what happened previously.
Emery is an interesting character. Towards the end at Paris Saint-Germain, he sat down with the Spanish journalist Marti Perarnau and offered a detailed insight into his time at the French club and the kind of manager he would like to be. Without a hint of bitterness he conceded that though he was the manager, his authority wasn’t absolute.
“One day Jorge Valdano said, ‘At Barcelona, the leader is Messi. At Real Madrid, it’s Florentino Perez. At Atletico, it’s Diego Simeone.’ A player, a coach and a president. A different kind of leader every time. I know when I’m the main person responsible and when I’m not. It’s a process that a coach has to live with and internalise, and one he assimilates with time and experience. In every club, you have to know what your role is and what role you have vis-a-vis the rest of the group.
“I am of the opinion that PSG’s leader is Neymar. Or that he is currently becoming it. Neymar came to PSG to be the leader, to go through this process to some day become the best in the world. It’s a process that will require a bit more time in order to consolidate this position. At Manchester City, Pep is in charge. At PSG, Neymar has to be.”
Emery talked about how he likes to work on set-pieces and considers this is one of his strengths. But then all the work on the training ground would count for nothing as, with a stroke of genius, Neymar would render all the preparation irrelevant. “I always prepare set-pieces extensively, and that has often worked in my favour. But when you have Neymar, sometimes there isn’t much more that you need — Neymar becomes your strategy.”
At Arsenal, Emery has no desire to be the manager he was at his former club. Mesut Ozil should have seen this coming because it is now a matter of some uncertainty whether the German has a future at the Emirates stadium. Emery insists on his team pressing their opponents aggressively and winning the ball back as quickly as possible.
That demands a discipline and workrate that Ozil may or may not be able to deliver. He remains a gifted footballer but one who may not find a place in Emery’s set-up. You wonder how Ozil could resist the attraction of being part of a team who are destined to get a lot better, but some gifted footballers see things their way. What Ozil should know is that from his manager there will be no compromise.
Emery has decided what his role at Arsenal will be. This will be his team, not Ozil’s. “Sometimes you need to do what Guardiola did when he got rid of Deco, Ronaldinho and Ibrahimovic,” Emery told Perarnau. “Afterwards, Zlatan and his agent got into an argument with Pep? OK, but they got rid of him, and they got rid of the obstacle preventing them from completing their masterpiece. Pep is a coach who makes masterpieces. What am I missing? Making my masterpieces, real masterpieces. And making them my own.”
The future for Arsenal looks interesting.
I enjoy seeing Unai consult with his advisors in the tech area and have a real dialogue rather that simply ranting into Stevie Bould's ear while he [Bould] looks on in grim silence knowing his opinion would be ignored anyway.
Also, he shows proper professional respect to the opposing manager where Wenger would offer a cursory wet-fish hand shake and no eye contact.
And half time substitutions!
He's used an awful lot of words there to say... not very much at all, really.
1. He has changed the players' mentality by making them run more.
2. He speaks to his coaches.
3. He has alienated our best player.
Don't misunderstand me, I'm far from arguing against Emery's initial impact, which certainly looks positive. I just think that's a limp dick of an article.
ivories are far from perfect and his hair's a little on the shiny side.Originally Posted by Sir C
If that's all you got out of that article I suggest you try reading all of it next time
All good stuff and all that ..but we are still in 5th place and have conceded more goals than all above us . I too have been happy with the new regime , but a manager that relies on pressing needs to get results early for the players to buy in fully ....very easy for them to tune him out otherwiseIf that's all you got out of that article I suggest you try reading all of it next time
We are unbeaten in 21 games BB.
Are you sure that Palace are 5th in the league, BB? Slipped under my radar, it would seem.
A bit of a misleading statistic when you consider it includes games against Vorskla (x2), Blackpool, Brentford, Quarabag etc.
I know , i know ...and i want to be all in SW , there's just something holding me back
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