Gunners transformed
> It is becoming clearer than ever what Emery wants from his Arsenal team
IT IS always tempting in football to read too far ahead, to interpret out of a few moves or even minutes of a match lessons projected far into the future.
Especially with a club like Arsenal, in the midst of change, when every little event and detail is grasped as the moment when one stage ends and the next begins.
So it is far too easy to pronounce any moment of Unai Emery’s Arsenal tenure as definitive, as the point when the transition was over and the Emery era began.
This process, if it happens at all, will happen through a gradual development, a slow emergence over time, like the changing of the seasons.
And yet at Craven Cottage on Dec 7 it was possible to discern, clearer than ever before, what Emery wants from his Arsenal team.
For the opening weeks of this season, and the start of this new Arsenal era, it has been difficult to discern too much of Emery’s stamp on the team.
That is not his fault, he has been playing with a squad put together by a combination of Arsene Wenger and Sven Mislintat, with little input from himself.
Emery has had to try to re-wire this squad, teaching them his ideas about football, in the limited time afforded him between domestic and Europa League games.
It has not been easy: Arsenal arrived back at 5am on Friday (Dec 5) after their trip to Azerbaijan to play Qarabag, and then had to be out on the pitch at 12pm on Sunday to play Fulham.
The time left over for Emery to teach these players, rather than taking them from game to game, is minimal. This is why it was impressive to see an Arsenal team on Sunday who looked slightly more in tune with what they were being asked to do than they have been at any other point this season.
It helped that with Petr Cech injured, Bernd Leno made his first Premier League start in goal.
The passing move in their own third, so often so awkward
for Arsenal, suddenly looked smoother.
It helped too that with Rob Holding preferred to Sokratis at centreback, Arsenal could build up the play with more assurance than ever before.
What was more impressive than that, though, was the muscular, physical 4-4-2 approach Arsenal played with.
That was the style of Emery’s Sevilla teams, all controlled running and aggression, and it has not always come easily to Arsenal this season.
It also helped, then, that Alex Iwobi, Arsenal’s most powerful winger, started out on the left.
He turned the game for Arsenal the previous week and on Sunday he helped to make the opening goal for Alexandre Lacazette in the first half.
With Lacazette and Danny Welbeck up front, Arsenal had an incisive, mobile presence, never leaving the Fulham back three with a minute of time.
And when Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang came on for Welbeck, Arsenal got even sharper up front, and Aubameyang scored twice.
The close relationship between Lacazette and Aubameyang has been one of the most impressive parts of 2018 for Arsenal.
Not many defences would want to play against them.
But perhaps the most interesting thing about the Fulham match, and the reason why the Arsenal 4-4-2 worked so well, was the absence of Mesut Ozil.
He was out with a back spasm and it is hard to see how Arsenal could have played that way with him in the side.
He is strictly a 4-2-3-1 man, and even attempts to put him out wide in a 4-3-3 have never quite worked.
Henrikh Mkhitaryan played on the right wing and ran far harder than Ozil would have done.
Emery wants more from Ozil and watching Arsenal at Fulham, you could sense how the difference between what Emery expects from his players, and what Ozil gives him.
And while Ozil is a brilliant player, no one could look at this performance and say the team was lacking in individual quality.
This does not mean Ozil is finished at Arsenal, or that he does not have a future under Emery. That generous contract he signed only a few months ago will guarantee that he does.
But now, watching Arsenal play like this, you see the vague outline of what Emery wants, and you realise that Ozil will have to fit into it, rather than waiting for it to form itself around him. – The Independent