Unai Emery - Initial thoughts: Page 27 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

Unai Emery - Initial thoughts

goon

I just can't get my head around the players being left on the bench. Wenger was often at fault for trying to fit all his best players into the sdie, Emery has gone the other way and is leaving his best players out of it.

I said Sampaoli was arrogant for putting his tactics ahead of the quality of the players and I feel the same is here true. Say what you like about shape and tactics, but leaving all of Laca, Aaron and Ozil on the bench while you have Stephan and Xhaka in defence and two players who are well off form in attack just doesn't compute for me. Neither does playing a largely counter attacking shape when you're at a team sitting 19th in the table.

After Wenger people may like the 'tactical flexibility' and 'proactive' early changes, what I see is someone who really doesn't know how to get the best out of these guys. I can't imagine it's helping the players either. How can it not lead to confusion?

That's not to say there are not quite a few positives, and I think he's quite unluckly that the top 4 are keeping up an incredible pace at the moment and our own performnce so far is actually pretty positive in my view.

Claudius

Goon, it's beginning to be a bit bizarre. At first I thought it made sense to ensure that people understood that they were all small pieces of the puzzle. Now it feels self-defeatist if we are to be the best version of ourselves. Ramsey out on the right should be tried. Or if we are willing to do v-formations in midfield, then why not Ramsey at one of the points, for example?

Throwing out that formation today reeked of fear. It said to Southampton "we are scared that we do not have defenders and will defend from the front". Puta! We needed our best players in midfield and attack putting these guys under pressure

goon

Yep. For all the talk about him rather winning 5-4, wanting us to be protagonists etc, his lineups in recent weeks have been very pragmatic. There was a point in the first half where Auba was there as a third right back deep in our own half. That just shouldn't be allowed.

QuincyAbeyie

Only City have scored more than us, so can't say that I'm that disappointed in the offensive choices. What I don't see is why we played with a back four today, it seemed pretty obvious that we shouldn't. Was looking forward to see if Guendouzi could be more effective with Torreira and Xhaka as protection.

Klaus

Qwiss! wrote:
Anyway Klaus you spent last season telling us how shit the squad was. The addition of Auba and Torreira plus more mediocrity is hardly enough to warrant a much better return.

We've improved the extreme ends of the team significantly on paper at least. Cech was a disaster last season and Leno, despite the performance today, is a clear upgrade. Auba is a top class striker. The rest are various degrees of good to very good players. I think that's enough to play better football than we've done so far. I don't expect us to be title challengers but we have the players to finish in the top four. The problem to me is that Emery benches half of them on any given day.

Ray

Can’t fault Emery for benching so called better players in attack because he’s got it right so far, we have scored the second most goals in the league only bettered by doped up Man City and Pep.

The issue clearly is defensively, and that was an area of concern with Emery historically anyway, so it isn’t much of a surprise. But it hasn’t been helped by the dross Wenger left behind in defense. Sven needs to identify top full backs and CB’s on a tight budget, and Emery needs to adjust his system to improve defense, he’s tried to address it with a change to 3 CB’s but we don’t have the players for it.

He’s done well but needs more time certainly.

flobaba

That was a very odd game. We came out really flat and Emery failed to inspire any change in intensity or creativity.

Team needs refreshing and reinforcements. Won’t make top 4 with the current squad at the rate with which our players are falling out.

mdgoonah41

the most bizarre thing is why he sticks with this formation despite our available personnel. we have 1 available CB today, and its a guy who has been out injured for months. we could have started with a back 4, using monreal at CB (where he's played before) and used AMN at LB to start. we could have then had xhaka/torreira as our CM partnership, which has been a big part of our success during this run. mkh, ozil and iwobi, then auba up front, with laca able to come on to provide a spark.

instead we used this weirdass 3 at the back, and we even played xhaka as a centerback. just bizarre. if he wants to play 3 ATB, and i dont know why he would given that hes never really used it in his career (as far as i know), then we need to massively overhaul our squad in january. we dont have enough centerbacks. mustafi looked like he injured himself against man united. even if hes back, we only have sokratis, mustafi and kos as fit centerbacks. monreal/kola are okay at LWB, but now bellerin is out and lichtsteiner is not really an attacking wingback.

he doesnt trust ozil to play as a winger/attacking mid. if he doesnt trust him, we should sell him.

the squad is so thin right now. except the last europa league game, hes been playing our top players a ton of minutes. now we add the crazy holiday schedule plus the FA cup to the mix. we're going to be using the academy players to play meaningful games in the next few weeks if this keeps up.

Daz

mdgoonah41 wrote:
we could have started with a back 4, using monreal at CB (where he's played before) and used AMN at LB to start. we could have then had xhaka/torreira as our CM partnership, which has been a big part of our success during this run. mkh, ozil and iwobi, then auba up front, with laca able to come on

Agree this should have been our lineup. I've been pretty happy with Emery but I expected him to give AMN more of an opportunity, especially in games/situations like this one

speedy

Klaus wrote:
Qwiss! wrote:
Anyway Klaus you spent last season telling us how shit the squad was. The addition of Auba and Torreira plus more mediocrity is hardly enough to warrant a much better return.

We've improved the extreme ends of the team significantly on paper at least. Cech was a disaster last season and Leno, despite the performance today, is a clear upgrade. Auba is a top class striker. The rest are various degrees of good to very good players. I think that's enough to play better football than we've done so far. I don't expect us to be title challengers but we have the players to finish in the top four. The problem to me is that Emery benches half of them on any given day.

Auba class, but you can see clear as day the pace isn't what it used to be. When's the last time he roasted anyone for pace. He's been wide a lot and the easiest trick in the book is to knock it past someone and run onto it.
Even when he gets the ball on counter attacks and he has a chance to foot race the CB he never goes at the goal he angles his run away.

HomeSteak

Only in 2011-12 (25) have Arsenal conceded more goals after 17 games of a Premier League season than they have so far this campaign (23).

Hope to god we get a top CB this winter.

speedy

HomeSteak wrote:

Only in 2011-12 (25) have Arsenal conceded more goals after 17 games of a Premier League season than they have so far this campaign (23).

Hope to god we get a top CB this winter.

A back up right back that can run, at least a centre half and certainly a left back.

We've played with a ton more intensity this season. We've all been begging for that so I think that's bought emery some good will. The periods where Wenger got us playing with this kind of intensity we blew teams away. Our performances have been all over the shop.

The chopping and changing doesn't help. He's a manager not a coach. He mentioned how Wenger works more with the players. With the suggestion he's a systems guy(manager). So like Benitez or ranieri they tinker like mad with the line ups because it's all they're thinking about before a game.

While someone like klopp, Wenger is more a player coach than a manager. Looking to improve the players individually to help the system.

I'm expecting the chopping and changing to somewhat lessen but continue on the whole.

Anzac

I suspect part of the issue re team selections is about trying to spread the squad and stay competitive in more than one comp to regain CL next season.

FEBravo

The fact that we are not massively worse off than last year after 22 years of Wenger in charge in itself is a good sign re Emery and the club in general. He's not perfect, but the next year and a half to me is where palpable progress has to be made.

speedy

Anzac wrote:
I suspect part of the issue re team selections is about trying to spread the squad and stay competitive in more than one comp to regain CL next season.

Yea every manager rotates. But we're taking about rotating more than necessary.

It was I'm interesting in the match build up neville, souness and keano were chatting about when things aren't going well for the manager. You pick your honest players the ones that put in the most graft like Jose at United's gone back to start fellini Rashford ect. That's what emery is doing here.

Qwiss

speedy wrote:
Anzac wrote:
I suspect part of the issue re team selections is about trying to spread the squad and stay competitive in more than one comp to regain CL next season.

Yea every manager rotates. But we're taking about rotating more than necessary.

It was I'm interesting in the match build up neville, souness and keano were chatting about when things aren't going well for the manager. You pick your honest players the ones that put in the most graft like Jose at United's gone back to start fellini Rashford ect. That's what emery is doing here.

Apart from Ozil who does that really apply to though? Ramsey will press as hard as anyone, he's out of favour because he's leaving. Leaving out Laca is nothing to do with that as he works as hard as anyone. Who else is actually being excluded?

Claudius

I think it really comes down to Ramsey. I think we need to make big decisions on both players this mo the.

Ozil is getting some chances and it isn’t happening. This funk seems interminable, at least at Arsenal, so we should put him out of his misery soon. I’ll miss him, but another half year of this isn’t going to benefit anyone.
Ramsey - if we are sitting him because he is departing, might as well leave now, even at a discount. Again, who does it serve to have such an important asset sitting around being underutilized?

Clrnc

Ramsey lacks the speed, power and athleticism that Emery will prefer. I think ultimately what he wants to build will be similar to Liverpool, everybody has speed or power to press and play. They pretty much signed anyone who got that prototype.

Anyway talking about Ramsey, this is pretty impressive given that he hasn't played the most minutes. But then again Sane for a rotation player is blowing everyone out with his assist rate as well.

speedy

Qwiss! wrote:
speedy wrote:
Yea every manager rotates. But we're taking about rotating more than necessary.

It was I'm interesting in the match build up neville, souness and keano were chatting about when things aren't going well for the manager. You pick your honest players the ones that put in the most graft like Jose at United's gone back to start fellini Rashford ect. That's what emery is doing here.

Apart from Ozil who does that really apply to though? Ramsey will press as hard as anyone, he's out of favour because he's leaving. Leaving out Laca is nothing to do with that as he works as hard as anyone. Who else is actually being excluded?

I hadn't put much thought into it, but ozil certainly. Miki gives more stability than Ramsey who runs all over. And owobi and Auba probably track back a lot deeper than laca would be prone to out there.

Kel Varnsen

Tinkering with the starting line up would probably have little effect on our performances. We have far too many average players in the squad, who don't really play well on a consistent basis. It doesn't really matter who Emery selects out of Iwobi, Ozil, Ramsey, Mkhtaryan, Guendouzi, Xhaka, Mustafi, Holding, Bellerin, Lichtsteiner etc. None of them are good enough to improve this team significantly. So instead it just becomes a matter of picking the players who seem to be fit and playing decent'ish together. But that's a hard task.

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