Arsenal’s defeat by Manchester City on Sunday was a reality check for their fans and demonstrated how much work new Gunners boss Unai Emery has to do. It is obvious that the Arsenal players are still getting used to the way Emery wants them to play, and it is going to take them time to get it right. You also have to consider the challenge he faces in taking over from Arsene Wenger. This is a new era for the club after 22 years, and it is going to see a lot of changes. It is an exciting time, but there will be some disappointments too and this was Emery’s first game in charge, against a City side who won the league with 100 points last season. It was never going to be easy.
I think there was an element of disappointment for Arsenal supporters on Sunday because a lot of people thought that, with Emery spending all of pre-season together with his squad, they could have stolen a march on City boss Pep Guardiola, who has only had some of his players back for a couple of weeks. But the idea of them catching City cold probably disappeared at last weekend’s Community Shield, when Pep’s players came out and performed so impressively against Chelsea even though some of them did not seem to have had any summer break. The thing to remember here is that the City project with Guardiola is two years further down the line than where Arsenal are at with Emery, and it definitely showed.
This is Guardiola’s third season and in that time he has completely overhauled the club. That is exactly what Emery is doing now, but he is just starting out. One of the features of the game at Emirates Stadium was that Arsenal were hell-bent on trying to pass out from the back, whatever the situation. That was despite having a 36-year-old goalkeeper in Petr Cech who is vastly experienced but has never played that way to the same extent before, not even under Wenger.
Arsenal often struggled to beat the City press and clear their lines, and what made things even more awkward for Cech was that he was not being given many options. It seemed that, along with one of their central midfielders, the two Gunners centre-halves were dropping into really deep positions to make up a three to get the ball off him, but I was not really sure where they were trying to go from there. Cech made 42 touches – many more than he normally does, because the ball kept on being played back to him, rather than being passed up the pitch.
