Arsenal: Grit a growing part of the new look under Unai Emery

Arsenal’s long-criticized characteristic of complacency has slowly started to go away, with the team coming back into games that looked hopeless.

There have been a lot of changes surrounding Arsenal Football Club, as seen by Arsène Wenger’s departure after 22 years and the overall changes in the structure of the club (with the appointment of Raul Sanllehi as director of football as well as the appointments of Sven Mislintat as head scout and Unai Emery as the new manager) on and off the pitch.

Emery has brought a new style of play to the club, one that involves pressing high up the pitch, playing a high defensive line and playing out from the back.

While the results for the club may not matter that much this season due to the ongoing rebuilding project, it is important to analyze the results.

The fixture gods were not that kind to the new manager, with Arsenal playing reigning champions Manchester City and FA Cup winners Chelsea for their first two games. These were followed by a home game against West Ham and an away game against Cardiff City.

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One important thing to note about the past few fixtures is an aspect not always associated with this particular club: grit. The Gunners have shown a great amount of grit, character, whatever you wanna call it, in all of the fixtures this year (except for the game against Man City). In all of the aforementioned games, this club has come back from being one or two goals down, narrowly losing to Chelsea 2-3, but winning against West Ham 3-1 and Cardiff City 3-2.

The Gunners have been criticized in recent years for showing a lack of leadership and backbone, especially in the defense. The leadership and backbone concerns, along with complacent attitudes, are slowly going away with the signings of no-nonsense defenders like Sokratis and Stephan Lichtsteiner.

Coming back into a game after going down a goal or two is not easy at the highest level of football, especially with players who may not have moral-boosting body language (like Mesut Ozil). This club has done a great job coming back and even winning games which seemed impossible to win.