It feels rather weird to be entering a season and seeing someone other than Arsene Wenger in the Arsenal dugout. I, like hundreds of other 90s kids grew up in the mid-2000s thinking Arsenal FC was actually named after Arsene Wenger, and his influence on English football was paramount. Arsenal moved away from the philosophical Arsene Wenger after a successful 22-year spell that became underrated in its final seasons.
They replaced him with Unai Emery, who could hardly be more different. Wenger’s approach to the game was based on coaching and an overall philosophy of trying to do things ‘the Arsenal way’. Emery, on the other hand, is a micro-manager who will change his approach from all-out-attack to a direct counter-attacking style from one week to the next.
Arsene Wenger won three FA Cups in his final Arsenal years, but from an outside perspective, the team wasn’t as organised as they could have been and lacked the steel needed to challenge for a Premier League title. The final years in charge were summed up by a clear lack of desire to adapt to the opponent. Arsenal would on occasion change to a counter-attacking system, but they didn’t seem to really have a proper defensive system in place and they were noticeably poor when out of possession.
Unai Emery’s appointment hasn’t really met widespread praise, but I feel he is the perfect manager to help Arsenal into a new era for a variety of reasons. One thing Emery has excelled at is building solid and organised units that prepare for every game like it is a cup final. Emery is renowned for holding film sessions to the point that his players actually become slightly bored of them. There is a general assumption that his obsession with film sessions has actually sucked the fun out of the teams he’s managed. These assumptions are mostly based on nothing though, and there is no strong evidence to suggest that Emery’s meticulous preparation has ever gone too far to the point that he’s annoyed the hell out of his players.
However, let’s say Emery does hold these film sessions to the point where players are overheating their DVD players – why is this a bad thing? For years neutrals have complained about Arsenal being disorganised, unprepared for big games and lacking the spine to cope with a new era of all-out attack formations, yet when Arsenal rectify this by appointing a man renowned for thorough preparation, people still find a way to complain. Arsene Wenger obviously prepared for games or he would not have lasted 22 years as a top-level manager, but I question how prepared Arsenal were on the defensive side of things, and how often they really adapted to their opponents.
For a long time Arsenal had the best players in the world, notably the likes of Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp and Patrick Vieira. When those players left, so did Arsenal’s monopoly of dominating the Premier League and being able to enforce their free-thinking creative style on teams who were weak in comparison. They tried to do things the same way with players who were good, but not the very best like they had in their era of prominence.
The results were better than most other teams could dream of, but they were not good enough for a large section of Arsenal fans. Essentially, a more measured and intense approach will be needed if Arsenal are to once again regularly challenge the top four, as there was a real danger last season that their rivals were going to slowly start floating away from them.
Unai Emery is more flexible than most people think, but I believe he will set Arsenal up in a 4-3-3 formation that could potentially switch to a 4-2-3-1 against better teams. Though both formations are labelled differently they are actually quite similar, the only real difference is that a 4-3-3 switches to a bank of four and a bank of five in the defensive phase, whereas 4-2-3-1 switches to two banks of four. Below is an example of how Unai Emery could set his team up.
In the same way I think Unai Emery is a landmark for Arsenal, I think the arrival of Lucas Torreira is the most important signing Arsenal have made in many years. For years Arsenal have been slaughtered by pundits and fans for not having a top-class defensive mid, and their naive approach caused them to be on the end of some hammerings. Lucas Torreira was excellent at the World Cup but his reputation as one of the best deep-lying midfielders in Europe led to his signing.
Sampdoria has longed to be pushing for a European spot in the same way they did in the Roberto Mancini-Gianluca Vialli days, but they got close this year on the back of Torreira. The Uruguayan played as the holding mid in a 4-3-1-2 system that was exceptionally hard to break down. Sampdoria aggressively pressed out of this diamond formation and Torreira was often tasked with reading the game and making split-second decisions. He rarely made the wrong decision, and the result was a successful season for Sampdoria. His loss will likely cause a system change as very few players will be able to play the role he did, but he is a welcome addition to an Arsenal side that badly needed a true anchorman.
One of the main reasons I am excited for Torreira’s arrival is that it frees up Granit Xhaka. The Swiss international isn’t very popular among Arsenal fans and his lack of discipline combined with his wasteful passing and long-range shooting has frustrated many, but there is still a very good player in there somewhere. Last season he played most games and he was more often than not used as the deepest midfielder. On paper it makes sense because he has a good range of passing and he often dictated the play for Gladbach, but he struggled to maintain the positional discipline. Arsenal attempted to resolve this by switching to 3-4-3 formation but in reality it changed nothing. Arsenal were painfully weak between the lines and while Xhaka could have done more, he shouldn’t be chastised for being put in a position from which he was never going to come out as a winner.
At Gladbach, Xhaka often partnered a defensive midfielder such as Christoph Kramer in Lucien Favre’s attacking 4-4-2 system. This allowed him the freedom to move into the final third and spray balls into the wide areas, before arriving late into the box and even combining with the strikers when the opportunity arose. I am personally very excited to see what Xhaka can do alongside Lucas Torreira, and I think we will be talking about this as an elite central midfield pairing at the end of next season.
Stylistically, I expect Arsenal to move away from a possession-based system to one with more speed and incisiveness. This not only suits Granit Xhaka, but the likes of Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang too. When Santi Cazorla’s Achilles went in 2016, so did Arsenal’s ability to play a system based on ball retention and patient passing. They had square pegs in round holes all over the pitch and it is remarkable that they did nothing to address this sooner. Emery will prioritise creating chances over sticking to a philosophy and though they may not play the beautiful passing patterns that Arsenal played at times, I think they will be a very effective unit.
The two main knocks we all had on Arsene Wenger’s late Arsenal teams were that they were defensively unprepared and lacked a defensive mid who allowed the attacking players to flourish. By appointing the diligent Unai Emery and signing Lucas Torreira, Arsenal managed to fix these two problems. They still have a way to go, they need to add a left back and potentially some depth across the front three. Despite these issues, Arsenal went a long way to becoming more of a modern outfit and they have accepted their limitations. They will now become more of a reactive unit, and I expect them to compete with the big teams this year, especially away from home.
