Arsenal have appointed Unai Emery as their new head coach a couple of days back and the former PSG man’s first big job will be to take Arsenal back into the Champions League. And in order to do that, the Gunners boss will need to make a couple of high profile signings during the summer transfer window.
Almost every department in the Arsenal squad needs some kind of rebuilding. Every department except the striker line.
Arsenal signed Alexandre Lacazette last summer and then they managed to fish in Pierre Emerick Aubameyang from Borussia Dortmund during the January transfer window.
This means that Unai Emery will not have to spend a significant amount of his transfer budget in bringing in strikers.
But ever since Aubameyange joined the Emirates outfit, a lot of fans have been wondering if both the strikers can find a place in the first eleven together.
Arsenal’s former coach Arsene Wenger tried a series of combinations from playing a single striker to playing Lacazette out wide in order to accommodate both the strikers. But under new boss Unai Emery, the situation is a whole lot different.
Emery was asked the exact same question in an interview to which the Spanish manager clearly laid out his plans as to what he would do.
The Arsenal manager said: “If the ball is in play, you press. If play stops, you reposition yourself.
“For me, the 4-1-4-1 is the system which facilitates that type of pressing. The 4-4-2 is designed more and more for zonal positioning. It’s less aggressive but is more difficult to get past. That’s the case with Marcelino’s teams, Quique Sanchez Flores’ teams, Saint-Étienne when we last played them.
“With two strong, physical players behind him, it provided me with the necessary cohesion to press.
“In my case, the idea was not to win the ball back and counter as quickly as possible, but rather to equip ourselves once we had the ball. What Guardiola’s Barcelona did magnificently.
“We win the ball off of them, but those bastards always won it back. And Pep is doing it with City now. High pressure and win the ball back to start again once in position.”
From Unai Emery’s comments, it is pretty clear that both Lacazette and Aubameyang will find it difficult to play as a pair and one of the two will essentially have to play second fiddle in the long run.
