Report: Unai Emery changes his philosophy midst the season

Arsenal’s head coach Unai Emery has been sugar-coated by the Arsenal fans for some months now but the criticism has started in the last few weeks due to the embarrassing defeats to Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool and now West Ham United. There’s some few things that we have noticed that confirms that the Arsenal coach could have changed his philosophy.

THERE WAS NO PRESSING IN THE WEST HAM UNITED MATCH

Unai Emery was appointed as Arsenal’s head coach in May and in his first press conference, he talked of having been identified one problem with Arsenal which was; they couldn’t press the opponents to quickly regain back possession of the ball. Even though it hasn’t worked out well but we did see the players trying to adapt to this in the first half of the season.

But everything was different in their match against West Ham United, there was no intensity and more importantly the pressing which is considered to be among Unai Emery’s main objectives in the training sessions. The players didn’t want to press the opponents as they have done in the last few months and this could possibly be because Unai Emery has decided to change his approach to matches.

PLAYING FROM THE BACK HAS FAILED

Arsenal struggles a lot when playing the ball from the back but they normally stabilise in the match later on but it was a different scenario in their visit to the London Stadium. One of the main reasons why Bernd Leno was signed by Arsenal is because he is comfortable when playing from the back but he was this time sending the ball to the final third when the ball got passed to him.

It might not be because of him since the defence was putting him on a lot of pressure with a lot of back passes but Unai Emery’s philosophy has failed at the moment. And it seems he wants to change as he looks to have stopped the players from pressing the opponents.