WHOLE NEW BALL GAME
Unai’s happy to go long to get results
UNAI EMERY is ready to go against ‘the Arsene Wenger way’ and play long-ball football if required.
Arsenal’s new boss loves Tiki-Taka – or should that be tippy-tappy – football, the kind served up by fellow Spaniard Pep Guardiola at Manchester City, but is also ready to order muscle and might in search of victory.
His belief might shock Gunners purists brought up on Wenger’s walk-the-ball-into-the-net style – but this is a man on a mission to rewrite history, starting against Cardiff today.
He knows their manager Neil Warnock has achieved success with aggressive football, aggressive players and firing long balls into opposition defences.
Only the brave survive.
Emery, 46, won three successive Europa League titles with Sevilla by mixing and matching it with the best and he is not about to change now.
He has banned players from drinking fruit juice at the training ground this week and Emery will try anything in search of success.
He said: “I will do what it needs to win matches. Others might not like it but we are in the win business. I prefer to play the game as it should be played but you also have to adapt.
“I play to win every match, certainly to improve our away record.
“Now we are going to play against Cardiff away and for that my thoughts are only on how we can win. Then it’s not to think about the past.
“My concentration with the players is the next match, focus only to work for the next match and how we can win.
“It’s clear the data behind us but I want to write a new data, a new present, a new future with Arsenal with the players.”
Opening defeats to City and Chelsea may have got the Emery era at The Emirates off to a slow start but a win over West Ham last time out gave cause for hope.
And he insists that with more attention to detail his side can hit the heights once again.
“There are a lot of details we need to improve,” the ex-Paris Saint-Germain boss added. “There are situations on the pitch where we need to have more control. Every day we are analysing all the situations and the details to work to improve. We want to show on Sunday that we are improving.
“We need more control. More with the ball, more with our positioning, more when we close the ball down.
“But then it depends on the opposition. I have played long ball before, yes, a lot. In Spain the same, in France the same, in Russia the same. There are a lot of ways for you to choose to find the win.
“It depends on the team, the squad, the players. We can also build up with one idea but during the 90 minutes you need to play a lot of different ways to win, to impose your best condition on the pitch.”
Emery also paid tribute to his rival boss and said: “I understand Mr Warnock is competitive and I like it.
“I like this spirit. In football you need to be competitive, you need quality, you need to be organised.
“You need to push and to be competitive also in each moment and with the players. His career is a good career for that.”