Arsenal Vs West Ham United: Patterns change evaluations

As the Unai Emery era has gotten underway at Arsenal, the season has been one of analysis and evaluations. Saturday’s match against West Ham United will provide new patterns of play, and thereby new and different evaluations.

Before Arsenal’s opening match of the Premier League season, Gary Neville, when previewing Manchester City’s trip to the Emirates, repeatedly made the point that Unai Emery would not learn from the fixture.

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His point was simple: City play at such a high level and in a manner that is completely different and unique to the rest of the league that judging the performance of his team under such circumstances, against such opposition, would be somewhat obsolete. It bears little to no relevance to the rest of the season.

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While I do not completely agree with his sentiment, I did find it very interesting that Neville placed such importance on the lessons that Emery would learn from the match. For Neville, it’s as if the performance, and Emery’s analysis of it, is more important than the match itself. And I tend to agree with him. This season is a building season. It is about Emery laying the foundations for his project. This is about the evaluations that Emery makes and the decisions that are taken as a result.

So, on Saturday, when Arsenal welcome West Ham United to the Emirates, Emery will get a chance to scrutinise his new crop of players in a very differently structured match from the two competitive games that have been played thus far, the 2-0 loss to Manchester City and last weekend’s 3-2 defeat at Stamford Bridge to Chelsea.

Games against the rest of the top six are very different to games against the rest of the division. When playing lesser Premier League sides, Arsenal tend to be the better team with the better players. Consequently, they control the match through extended periods of possession and are tasked with breaking down a stubborn, deep-lying opposition defence.

That will most likely be the case against West Ham. It would be surprising if Manuel Pellegrini tried to take on the Gunners by pressing high up the pitch. The natural disparity in quality of the players would likely do for him and his team. But Chelsea and City had the ability to take Arsenal on and better them.

That changes the situations that the players are put in. There is more space higher up the pitch, defences are not as compact and disciplined, but there is far less pressure on the ball in deeper areas, possession will be plentiful but space in the final third will not be. The two types of game have very different patterns. That will alter Emery’s evaluations greatly.

Whether Emery will learn more from West Ham’s visit to the Emirates than City’s two weeks ago, who knows. But he will make different evaluations and draw different conclusions, and that will be important for the future decisions he makes.