Unai Emery needs to make PSG Compromise at Arsenal

Unai Emery can start winning at Arsenal by compromising his tactics the way he did with Paris Saint-Germain in 2017.

Unai Emery hasn’t become the first Arsenal manager to lose his opening two games in the Premier League since George Graham in 1992 because of how he’s tried to change the Gunners’ slack defending.

Instead, Emery lost to Manchester City and Chelsea because he has needlessly attempted to completely overhaul how Arsenal attack. He’s gone for a more direct strategy over the incisive, pass-heavy combinations predecessor Arsene Wenger preached.

Emery tried this once before, at Ligue 1 giants Paris Saint-Germain. It didn’t last as players lobbied for a more stylish, possession-based brand of soccer. Arsenal need their head coach to make the same compromise he made in the French capital.

It will mean ditching the 4-2-3-1 formation, a setup designed for pressing and counter-attacking, for a ball-hogging 4-3-3 lineup sure to get the most from the Gunners’ attacking stars.

Thriving going forward was never a problem for Arsenal under Wenger, not even last season, the Frenchman’s worst during a 22-year tenure when the Gunners finished sixth and without a trophy.

Even so, Arsenal still scored 74 goals, the joint third-highest in the division. Strikers Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, along with midfielders Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Aaron Ramsey, all ended Wenger’s final campaign in prolific form.

There are eerie similarities between the way Emery tried to alter the makeup of PSG’s attack and how he’s hampered Arsenal’s stars in forward areas.

Those similarities begin with how Emery has attempted to use contract rebel Ramsey through two matches. He pushed the box-to-box warrior too advanced and thrust him uneasily into a No. 10 role.

At least one PSG midfield maestro can relate, as this excerpt from the Guardian‘s Adam White shows:

"Despite the success he enjoyed with a more counter-attacking 4-2-3-1 set-up with Sevilla, Emery was reluctantly forced to switch to a more possession-based 4-3-3 at PSG after early attempts to move Marco Verratti into a No 10 role failed and the dressing room pressured him into reverting to the favoured formation which Laurent Blanc and Carlo Ancelotti had previously practised."

It didn’t work with Marco Verratti, because the Italy international is most effective dictating matches from deep. He’s a hub of possession ideal for a more patient style of play.

It won’t work with Ramsey because the Welshman’s best asset is his timing to surprise defenses with late runs from deep. The 27-year-old found himself a victim of Emery’s mismatched attacking tactics when he began Saturday’s 3-2 defeat to Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on the bench.

One of the keys to Emery’s system is having his players press intensely out of possession. It’s a frenetic demand totally at odds with the languid wizardry of Arsenal’s most-cultured playmaker Mesut Ozil.

He couldn’t press effectively from a wide berth against City, nor he could manage it as Ramsey’s replacement in the No. 10 position at Chelsea. Emery has already called on Ozil to work more in “defensive moments,” per John Cross of the Daily Mirror, but it’s simply not what the latter’s game is about, so why force it on him?

Forcing ill-fitting roles on creative types is becoming a worrying pattern in the early days of the Emery era. Mkhitaryan knows how difficult it can be, having tried unsuccessfully to double up defensively with Hector Bellerin on the right flank.

Mkhitaryan nearly sank without trace as Marcos Alonso and Willian tormented him during the opening 45 minutes at Stamford Bridge. Benjamin Mendy and Raheem Sterling did the same thing for City.

Mkhitaryan was liberated once he began switching positions with Ozil against the Blues and making runs from inside to out. Greater freedom yielded instant rewards as the Armenian schemer scored and assisted Alex Iwobi.

The irony of Emery’s tactical refit for Arsenal’s attacking play is how unnecessary it is. It didn’t work in Paris, as Julien Laurens noted for BBC Sport:

"His first game at PSG was the 2016 Trophee des Champions – the French Community Shield – against Lyon and they won 4-1. PSG played with an intensity like they never had before. It looked like his philosophy – pressing high, running a lot, attacking a lot, defending a lot, full backs bombing forward.But then the players said they should go back to what they know because they were used to tiki-taka football where they took their time."

Emery’s philosophical compromise at PSG led to four cup wins and a league title. It worked because he let artful, flair players such as Neymar and Angel di Maria roam centrally and create.

Rather than a rigid structure designed to restrict, Emery encouraged fluidity. He has the players to do the same thing in north London.

Ozil and Mkhitaryan can act as inverted wide players the way Neymar and Di Maria did. They will love the freedom to roam centrally and create.

When they are indulged, Arsenal’s forward players can produce stylish and decisive soccer, the way they did for periods at the Bridge:

Wenger engendered this kind of elaborate and slick build-up in the fabric of the club. Why mess with the good aspects he left behind?

Emery doesn’t have the players to make Arsenal a cagey, pragmatic team. Sure, he tried it against the Blues:

Not at all surprisingly, asking forward-thinking players to go against the grain isn’t a winning formula:

This was far from the “possession,” “personality” and “protagonists” Emery promised when he took over, per James Benge of the London Evening Standard.

The Spaniard inherited a squad built to own the ball and stay on the front foot.

He doesn’t have worker bees in the final third to play a pressing game. Nor does he have destructive ball-winners to deploy two holding midfielders and credibly protect the back four.

Emery’s greater reliance on structure, specifically off-the-ball work-rate and discipline, means he’ll eventually fix Arsenal’s dire defense.

The former Sevilla boss should limit his necessary tactical tweaks to said defense and let his stars up front focus on what’s worked in the past.

Emery was forced to compromise in Paris and should waste no time recreating the same concession at Arsenal.

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