Arsenal: Playing out from the back non-compromisable

A recent article on Pain in the Arsenal by Abhishek Nandi provided three reasons as to why Unai Emery should abandon his playing out from the back style. Well, here’s why I believe that it is non-compromisable and Emery should not change his ways.

When Arsenal decided to hire Unai Emery, moving on from Arsene Wenger in the process, they committed themselves to his ideas, to his principles, to his approach of how to manage a football team. They did not hire him for him to adapt to the club; it’s the club’s responsibility to adapt to him.

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In the modern game, it is the coaches that arrive at clubs with their systems already intact. That does not mean that they are not adaptable, changing to the needs of the team. But there are elements that are non-compromisable, that demand others to adapt to and abide by it.

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For Emery and Arsenal, one of those elements is the style of playing out from the back, starting with the goalkeeper and extending through every single player on the pitch. This is a core attribute and defining feature of this team. It is up to the players to adapt to Emery’s staunch and largely justified belief that this is the best and most successful way to play, not for Emery to adapt the style to the players who cannot function in such a manner.

Recently, on this site, Abhishek Nandi provided three reasons why he believes Emery should abandon the playing-out-from-the-back approach, waiting until the right players are in place until he re-installs it — you can read the article here. He makes a very sound argument, from the difficulties of Petr Cech to the absence of a pivoting midfielder built in the mould of a Santi Cazorla.

But I believe he missed one key nuance to Emery’s use of this system. Like Pep Guardiola at Manchester City, Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool, even Guardiola at Barcelona and Bayern Munich, from where this style largely stems, Emery is working out which of his players can play in this system and which cannot.

Abhishek’s argument starts from the need to win games now. And if that was the goal of Emery, then he would be correct that Emery needs to veer away from this current approach. But that isn’t the goal of Emery. Nor is it the goal of the club. This is a long-term project, one that is designed to win in the future but not so much in the present.

The short-term results are of little concern to Emery and the club. And so, therefore, the struggles that this team is currently showing in adapting to Emery’s style is not actually a problem; it is simply an indication that these players cannot be relied upon to execute as Emery requires and that they will have to be replaced.

That is why playing out from the back is non-compromisable. Changing it now would be utterly disastrous, an admittance that the short-term is more important than the long-term. It isn’t. And Emery must manage in full knowledge of that, which means persisting with the very basic strategies that define his very management.