Emery needs to sort his Arsenal out fast News

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Emery needs to sort his Arsenal out fast

By Daily Sports on August 27, 2019

The 2019/20 English premier league's plot has already begun to thicken like a rich pot of Ogbono soup on the boil with Manchester City and Liverpool showing little or no signs of letting up in their relentless pursuit of perfection. Both clubs who ran a neck to neck campaign last season, ending with Pep Guardiorla's City side pipping Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool to the title with the slimest of margins, got resounding 3-1 wins in their week 3 matches. Liverpool blew Arsenal away at their intimidating Anfield home while City went away and made easy work of Bournemouth.

Those two clubs will fight for the league again in what promises to be another tight race and their performances last weekend only go to remind us of this truth.

The other big teams, members of the exalted Super 6, have been unconvincing so far. Arsenal,Tottenham Hotspurs, Chelsea and Manchester United have not got off to impeccable starts, each having recorded disappointing losses and these clubs seem to me to have glaring issues they need to address or should have addressed during the transfer window.

One team that held a lot of promise with successful dealings in the transfer market in the eyes of many is Arsenal but Head Coach Unai Emery was always walking a tight rope following Arsenal’s unexpected splurge in the transfer market that saw the acquisition of big money players including record £72m signing Nicolas Pepe. To whom much is given much is expected. When a club commits huge amounts of money on players and entrusts them in the hand of a coach, they expect him to deliver with the players. That’s football.

Emery, since his arrival at Arsenal following the departure of Arsene Wenger, the legendary manager hounded out in the end, has promised but has not fully convinced.

Last season was always a learning curve for him at Arsenal but he has to begin to make a strong statement of being capable of taking the club higher. The opportunity to do this offered itself at Anfield and what better statement would he have made than beating Liverpool at a place they have not lost a game for years now? A draw at least would count as a big statement of turning a corner for Arsenal. But Emery failed in this task. His Gunners were hammered 3-1.

It was the manner of the defeat, the tactical approach and personnel deployed from the start that infuriated the Arsenal fans.

Emery chose a 4-3-1-2 diamond formation and the narrowness of this formation gave Liverpool's flying fullbacks, Trent Alexander Arnold and Andrew Robertson all the time in the world to raid Arsenal with dangerous crosses.

Arsenal were too cautious, dropping so deep and afraid to engage Liverpool blow for blow.

One could understand if a Newcastle or Sheffield United approached a game against Liverpool this way but not a big team like Arsenal.

Emery chose a battling defensive set up but did not include some players who I believe are more suited to this style and opted for more technical players who were more vulnerable to Liverpool’s and Klopl’s famed gegenpress.

If you’re going with a defensive mindset then a grafting Lucas Toreira should be a more reliable personnel than a Joe Willock, don’t you think? A stout Saed Kolasinac at left back should be a more reliable option than an ageing Nacho Monreal, don’t you think?

This brings us to the overall selection decisions of Emery. I believe that Arsenal have the players that could have gone toe to toe with Liverpool with a braver and more intelligent thinking from the bench. The Arsenal gaffe has been hammered for benching striker Alexandre Lacazzette, who scored a brilliant fighter’s goal against Burnley in their last match at the Emirates before the Liverpool game. Arsenal won 2-1 on that day.

Lacazzette was a big money signing and is a player with great inputs. But Emery seemed to be over thinking and made a decision not to bring him on until about 10 minutes to go when the Gunners were already 3 goals down.

Lacazzette came in and with Toreira they swung the course of the game and all of a sudden Arsenal started to look like the brilliant fearless team they have been noted for in years past.

Toreira pulled a goal back to give Arsenal a veneer of respect and if there was a positive from that match from Arsenal’s perspective, it is how they continued to fight despite conceding thrice, not wilting as they had done in their recent visits to Anfield and how they pressed Liverpool in the last quarter of the game.

Simply put, Emery should be approaching such big games with his biggest names and not mess around over thinking tactics. Sure, approaching any match involves nuances from a tactical perspective, but a good coach has to find a way of accommodating his biggest names within a stable tactical set up for matches. That’s what Klopp and Guardiola have done. Emery so far seems not to have found a base tactical formation and constant change of tactics can confuse your own players as much as they do the opposition.

Call me crazy but I believe that with players like Mezut Ozil (whose confidence has not been optimally managed in my opinion by Emery), Pierre Emeryk Aubameyang, Lacazzette and Pepe Arsenal have enough fire power to frighten Liverpool and get a win at Anfield. A big part of me tells me that a Klopp or a Guardiola can get this present Arsenal team to close to winning the league title.

I’m not writing Emery off though. Coaches learn from their errors and can become better with an openness to try new ideas, and Emery hopefully could find the right balance to get his team to have a strong showing for the rest season and turn the Liverpool loss to a mere forgettable blip.

With an equally wounded Tottenham to come to Arsenal’s Emirates stadium this weekend in the latest installment of the famed North London Derby, Emery has a chance to restore Arsenal’s fans belief in his methods. A fine attacking display and win will do that, but a poor performance followed by defeat would bring to big questions on whether he is the right man for Arsenal as Head Coach going forward.

unai

•Photo: Unai Emery

Source Daily Sports

Posted August 27, 2019