Emery emerging as one of Premier League’s most interesting managers

Arsenal have had an up and down first season under Unai Emery, but the manager has emerged as one of the most interesting in the Premier League.

The Premier League’s cult of the manager may never have been as strong as it is now. Lazy cliches and tired tropes state England’s top flight, the self-proclaimed Best League In The World, is better than all the other top flights because of its players. The talent on the pitch. A stronger argument, however, would instead focus on the talent in the dugout, particularly those of the top six.

Not only is the roster of Premier League managers as strong as it has ever been, but never before have the top six boasted figureheads laden with so much ideological weight. Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp, Maurizio Sarri and Mauricio Pochettino aren’t just coaches. They are thinkers.

This was the company Unai Emery joined by becoming Arsenal manager in the summer. Having never coached in England before, the Spaniard arrived at the Emirates Stadium as something of an unknown quantity, at least to the masses. Now, though, Emery has more than earned his place among the Premier League philosophers.

Indeed, the former Sevilla and Paris Saint-Germain boss has become one of the Premier League’s most compelling case studies, from a tactical standpoint. He might not be a Guardiola or a Klopp, or even a Pochettino. Emery is not so easily definable, not so easy to categorize, but the 47-year-old’s ways and methods are just as intriguing as any anything offered up by his peers.

Take last weekend’s north London derby, for instance. Emery’s team selection raised eyebrows from the moment it dropped, with top scorer Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Lucas Torreira and Mesut Ozil all on the bench. These decisions were made with a greater tactical masterplan in mind, though.

Arsenal packed the midfield against Spurs, with Alexandre Lacazette effectively playing as a third central operator alongside Granit Xhaka and Matteo Guendouzi. At times, the Frenchman was deeper than his attacking teammates Alex Iwobi, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and even Aaron Ramsey. This saw Spurs struggle to make passes out from the back, often resulting in them playing it long, by which time Arsenal were able to organize themselves defensively.

When Spurs did use the full-backs, Kieran Trippier and Danny Rose found themselves doubled up on. Emery’s system effectively suffocated the attacking verve of their north London rivals, with Arsenal only denied all three points by a stoppage time save by Hugo Lloris from an Aubameyang penalty.

This certainly wasn’t the first time we’ve seen Emery devise such a tailored game plan. There have been many occasions over the course of his first season in England when he has baffled with his team selections, usually through the omission of Ozil, only for a tactical blueprint to become apparent.

Of course, all this is in stark contrast to the way Arsene Wenger operated. The Frenchman, particularly in his latter years as Gunners manager, very rarely varied his approach from game to game. This resulted in Arsenal becoming predictable. Players also stagnated as they sunk into their comfort zones.

English soccer audiences aren’t always the most tactically tuned. The mainstream discourse in countries like Italy and Spain focuses on strategy to a far greater extent than is witnessed in the Premier League. And yet the masterclass regularly put on by the likes of Guardiola, Klopp, Pochettino, Sarri and Emery could prompt something of an awakening.

There are still questions for Emery to answer before he can claim to have restored Arsenal as a force. It’s not even certain that his first season at the club will be considered a success, with the Gunners as close to sixth place as they are to fourth and the stated target of Champions League qualification.

But if Arsenal wanted the anti-Wenger, someone willing to show a degree of pragmatism rather than stubbornness, they found him. Next time Emery omits a key player from his starting lineup, next time the pundits are ripping into the Spaniard before the game has even started, rest assured it is most likely part of a larger plan.