Arsenal: Unai Emery a genius for starting Henrikh Mkhitaryan

Arsenal made some adjustments in their starting XI against Liverpool, namely by starting Henrikh Mkhitaryan. And what a genius move that was.

Arsenal‘s 1-1 draw against Liverpool has a lot of fans fired up. The club looked every bit the equals of the Reds. There were a ton of fantastic individual performances to take home from this one, but there were also some questionable ones.

Somewhere in between was the performance of Henrikh Mkhitaryan. It was mildly surprising to see him in the starting XI, although even I flirted with the idea of putting him in my predicted XI solely because of one big reason – experience.

In a high-paced match against Liverpool, having someone who is a proven veteran who can keep his head on a swivel is quite useful. Plus, we all know that Mkhitaryan is better than how he’s been playing.

He wasn’t good at first. But things gradually began to warm up. He became such a menace, pressing opposing defenders high up the pitch and even winning it back on occasion.

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It might not have been his best match, and I’m sure we might have been able to better use the position in some way, but Unai Emery is a genius for starting him. Not just for the fact that it was sensible given the opposition, given the need for experience, given the belief that Mkhitaryan is better than what he’s been playing.

But also because it set up Alex Iwobi with a sense of urgency to do something when he got on the pitch and, lo and behold, he got the match-tying assist that gave the Gunners perhaps their biggest individual point in five years.

I love a manager that knows how to use internal competition. After Iwobi threw up a stinker against Palace, he got replaced by Mkhitaryan and he knew damn well that he better do something with his time as a sub.

He did.

And, in the meantime, Mkhitaryan found his way into some positive form the more he settled into the match. Meaning that everybody won. Mkhitaryan won. Iwobi won. Arsenal drew (but won for the long haul).

Now, we have a Mkhitaryan coming back into form, we have an Iwobi who is back into confidence, and everything feels just peachy.

It couldn’t have been an easy call, but I wouldn’t have called it any other way. Emery is brilliant, and he’s going to take this club places.