Does Unai Emery need to adapt his style at @Arsenal?
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ARSENAL’S WORST START to a season in 23 years prompted Sky Sports analyst Jamie Carragher to suggest that new manager Unai Emery should alter his tactical approach in order to adapt to English football, but fellow Sky pundit Gary Neville cited his ill-fated managerial stint at Valencia as evidence for why the Spaniard should stick to his guns despite the Gunners’ consecutive Premier League defeats.
Emery has seen his approach questioned after his side shipped five goals in their opening two league fixtures – 2-0 and 3-2 defeats to Manchester City and Chelsea respectively – but Neville disagreed with Carragher’s suggestion that the former Sevilla and PSG boss should change his ways in his attempts to kickstart their campaign.
Speaking on Monday Night Football, Neville argued that Arsenal were always likely to take a few licks during a season in which Emery will attempt to imprint his style on a side he’s scarcely built, and the former Valencia manager explained how ‘adaptation’ caused his reins to loosen during his time in charge of the Spanish giants.
“I think it’s ignorant to suggest he has to adapt,” said Neville. “Unai Emery has come into this football club and he’s had six weeks to work. Unai Emery has been a coach for 10 years and been successful. He has his idea. The players have to adapt to him. And he has to find out which players can adapt to him and which players can’t.
“Of course he’ll lose games. To be honest with you, in this first season I’m expecting there’s going to be some pain for Arsenal – in this ‘transition’ that they’re going through. But the last thing I would expect of any football coach coming into a club – I think it’s dangerous as well – is to adapt.
I know this from my biggest learning in Valencia: I set off on a path of what I was going to do – didn’t get results. The minute I started to ‘adapt’ and take people away from my idea, and change things… I remember a game against Celta Vigo where I said, ‘Right, don’t play it out from the back. Knock it long, let’s get in behind – be a bit more pragmatic. All of a sudden, I threw away the previous three or four week’s work that I’d done.
“If he starts to work on one idea with the players of playing the ball out from the back, but then says to them, ‘Oh, but by the way, if there’s a bit of pressure there just knock it long,’ he’s starting to get confusion into players’ minds.
He’s only five or six weeks in. I saw Sam Allardyce’s comments last week – I think on the radio – after their (Arsenal’s) first game – where he talked about, ‘You can’t do this, you can’t do that.’ Unai Emery’s not trying to get eight points from five games to avoid relegation – he’s trying to build a team to win a title! He’s trying to build a team with a style to win a title, not lump it long and try and get behind.
Neville pinpointed Emery’s usage of Mesut Ozil as an example of how the 46-year-old Gunners head coach has already begun to take the right steps, but requires time in order to reach his destination.
“Let’s take Mesut Ozil: he can’t press from the front. So he (Emery) has got to give Mesut Ozil an opportunity – enough rope – to basically see what he’s going to do with it (the ball). And the reality of it is, he said to Mesut Ozil in the lead-up to the second game, ‘You’ve got to work harder’ – the first time I’ve heard someone call Mesut Ozil out, after one game.
“The second game, he hooks him and subs him. He’s working him out, he’s basically saying, ‘I’m giving you a chance. If you don’t want to press, if you don’t want to do what I’m telling you, you’ll be out of the team.’
He’s working out those players who are going to come with him. The last thing he should do in my experience – which was a bad one – is adapt and change his ideas, because the players will walk all over him and think they can take him wherever they want to.
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