Arsenal adapt under Unai
Ozil looks on outer as Gunners secure win without him
At the end of this most gripping and frenetic of North London derbies, when the red smoke from the home fans’ flares was still drifting into the evening sky, it was hard to take the eyes off Unai Emery, the manager who had produced a masterclass of shape-shifting to inspire a 4-2 victory, the most seismic of his short Arsenal reign.
Arsenal were once predictable. For years, we have all known what is meant by the “Arsenal style”. The club’s own players have known it, and so have their opponents. A trip to the Emirates was never easy during Arsene Wenger’s reign, even in those dark days at the end, but it was also never a surprise. You knew what you were going to get: nice football, good players, pretty passing.
Under Emery, those days are fading into memory. There is no single “Emery style”, no all-important philosophy or strategy.
Instead, Arsenal are adaptable, chameleonic and fluid. In this breathless victory, they switched between no fewer than three formations. They played fast and direct, but then became slower in their build-up. They had joy down the wings, but then went narrow. They had one striker, then two. Three centre backs, then two. Two central midfielders, then four.
It was testament to Emery’s willingness to reshuffle his team, to change the angles of attack and keep
Tottenham guessing. And it also felt telling that all this worked so well in the absence of Mesut Ozil, the star man who appears increasingly out of place at the Emirates. The German was ruled out of this game with a back injury, Arsenal said, and Emery did not know whether he was at the stadium to watch the game.
The likelihood is that Emery has grown frustrated with the constant debate over Ozil, who was also all over the back pages last week, when he was dropped to the bench for the
victory over Bournemouth.
Here was the greatest victory of Emery’s fledgling Arsenal career, and yet minds were already drifting towards a player who may not have even been in the stadium.
This, though, is what you get with the endlessly divisive Ozil. These questions are the result of two consecutive victories achieved without the club’s highest earner, and it is becoming less controversial to suggest that Arsenal might be better, or at least more in tune with Emery’s ideals, without the German in the side.
For all their flexibility, which has been so absent in these parts for so many years, and for all the different systems Emery deployed in this triumph, there are constants the Arsenal manager demands: intensity, speed, dynamism.
These are qualities embodied most obviously by Lucas Torreira, a phenomenon in central midfield. They are not attributes usually associated with the more mercurial Ozil.