Arsenal vs Tottenham: The logic behind the starting XI

Arsenal had a very specific game plan against Tottenham, courtesy of Unai Emery, and you can see, in his choices for the starting XI, how brilliant it was.

When the starting XI got announced, and as some Arsenal fans were losing their minds, I was jotting down notes about how smart this formation was. Granted, I was a bit disappointed too. I wanted to see Mesut Ozil and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang out there from the start, but I totally saw the logic behind what Emery was doing.

Particularly in his back line. No player did I want to see out there more than Sead Kolasinac, but Emery chose his four best defenders. Kolasinac and Ainsley Maitland-Niles were left out because they aren’t good defenders, they are good attackers. And he didn’t use the back three because, let’s be honest, the back three has been porous, and we don’t get the best out of Sokratis.

So check mark on the back line, it makes complete sense what he was going for. We move up to the midfield, where he gave Matteo Guendouzi another start next to Granit Xhaka, conspicuously leaving Lucas Torreira on the bench.

Well that was obvious why, he wanted Xhaka’s control, which he provided as best as he could, and he wanted 110% out of Guendouzi, all the while knowing that he was only going to give him 45 minutes and ask Lucas Torreira to pick up where Guendouzi left off for the final 45.

It made sense, and it flustered the middle of the park for the Spurs, with Eriksen in particular pushed out of position on a regular basis in an attempt to find space.

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His three creative attackers, Aaron Ramsey, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Alex Iwobi, all have one main thing in common – willingness to defend and track back. They have engines that just don’t stop and that came in handy on more than a handful of occasions early on, with Iwobi and Mkhitaryan displaying clutch defending and Ramsey adding added power to the midfield duo.

And Alexandre Lacazette followed the same theme – more defensive work rate, more of a target man, more precision.

It all checked out. Everything that Unai Emery set out to do worked, and were it not for some lackluster finishing, this match would have been put away, a feather in the cap of a genius game plan by Emery.

While it didn’t work out that way, it’s clear that Emery is getting the hang of this. This game plan was spot perfect, aside from the decision to introduce Mesut Ozil at all, as the match was never going to be in his favor.

Regardless, this was a managerial triumph. Give the man some credit, as most of you already are, because he got this absolutely right.