Arsenal: Alex Iwobi should see Unai Emery as a reset button

Struggling Arsenal youngster Alex Iwobi is excited to work with Unai Emery, and he should be. This is his chance to start over, which he desperately needs.

Arsenal have a wealth of young talents available to Unai Emery, and from the sounds of it, he knew good and well what kind of resources they had, and made that clear in the interview process.

I wish I knew what he had pinpointed about Alex Iwobi. The young midfielder (attacking, maybe. Central, also maybe) had a breakout year at the end of 2016, but these past two years have been bordering on a nightmare for him. He hasn’t lived up to Arsene Wenger’s expectations and fans have grown weary of him.

Wenger pegged him as a 10 goal, 10 assist kind of guy, and he hasn’t really gotten close to that tally yet, because he hasn’t proven himself viable for an entire season.

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To be fair, he did come on strong at the tail end of last year, but he has done that before and it failed to materialize into anything more in the following year.

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With Unai Emery coming in, Iwobi has to sort himself out. Emery is not Wenger. Arsene Wenger was never going to give up entirely on Alex Iwobi, but even he was starting to ease up on the constant usage of the young Nigerian, for obvious reasons – he was not effective.

Emery won’t have as much patience. But that should be welcomed by Alex Iwobi, who can treat the arrival of Unai Emery as a sort of “reset button” to get himself into his best possible form.

It was easy enough to see where things go wrong with Iwobi. The closer he gets to goal, the more he, well, “craps his pants.” He seems to get finicky, nervous and ineffective and, more times than not, it leads to mistakes and fluffed final balls.

Deeper on the pitch, he is effective as can be, with a quick first step and a fantastic, deft touch. But translating that to effectiveness near the goal is key for an attacking midfielder, unless he wants to undergo a complete positional revolution, which he may incidentally be doing anyway.

Whatever the case, there is pressure now. There should be no comfort. He needs a fresh start.

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And that’s how he should be seeing this. Because these kinds of opportunities don’t come along often.