I mean, I'm absolutely positive that Emery wasn't asking players to fuck up their distances that badly. I do think he wanted Torreira to play a different role, one that might have worked theoretically more than actually, and that it was not the right way to go. The distances were the result of tactical breakdown brought about by persistently bad selection decisions and formation changes, not by design. I was struck in preseason by how tight our lines were in a 442/4231 transition-based system, and how much better we moved in unison up the pitch. That never translated, really, to competitive games. Emery obviously wanted it to, but it didn't.
