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Arsenal: Unai Emery keeps using the same, delightful word
By Josh Sippie
Arsenal have been about playing beautiful football ever since Arsene Wenger arrived, and Unai Emery is following that… with his own twist.
Words don’t always mean that much, but when you’re eagerly anticipating the start of the Arsenal season – the fresh start, I should say – than words are everything, because they are all we have.
Unai Emery is choosing all of the right words. The focus of Arsenal Football Club under Arsene Wenger was to play beautiful, attractive football that was pleasing to watch. That was well and good, and it worked for awhile, but the emphasis might well have been placed more on winning, rather than style points.
Emery has started to use some of the same words. He wants the team to play with style and with a personality, and that’s well and good. I hope we do establish that as a mainstay with the club.
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But then he pulled out his (and my) favorite word again – he wants the club to be ‘protagonists’ on the pitch.
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Maybe it’s the writer in me, but pitching this club as the protagonist gets me all tickled. The idea behind it is a beautiful one. No more sitting back and letting things come to us. No more dillying or dallying, or hoping things work out.
Emery wants the club to be the primary source of action. The driving force behind each match.
You think about the protagonist in any great story and what do they do? They propel the story forward. They don’t sit back and wait for things to happen. That would make for a boring story with no style and very little personality.
The Gunners had too much sitting back and waiting for things to happen over the past couple of years. The thought that they may now be out of that mode and into a mode of taking the fight to the antagonist – the other team (who will lose in the end, because they always do) – now that is a psyche I can get behind.
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The season can’t come soon enough. Hell, the preseason can’t start soon enough. Get these boys out on the pitch so we can see just how much of a force they can be when it comes to pushing the story along.