Arsenal: No need for Unai Emery to start handing out favors now

Unai Emery had a brilliant game plan for Arsenal against Spurs, and it coincides with his strategy this year, so there’s no time for favors.

Unai Emery’s game plan against Spurs, even though it only came to an (unfair) draw, is a feather in the Arsenal manager’s cap. It was a truly brilliant strategy, and it couldn’t have been an easy one to make, because he made so many changes to the starting XI, changes that made him a bit unpopular early on.

It couldn’t have worked out any better from a strategic standpoint. Everything that he changed proved brilliant, and it was clear that Emery’s micromanagement was exactly where it needed to be for this match to be in the palm of his hand throughout.

There was only one mistake that he made, and that mistake is a rather tame one. With his last substitution, Emery put on Mesut Ozil in the 71st minute. Now, Ozil had played brilliantly against Bournemouth, and even I was disappointed that he didn’t start at Wembley, but it didn’t take long into the match to see why he hadn’t started.

This was not an Ozil match and it was never going to be. I hate that we have to classify if a match is “right for Ozil” or not, but that’s where we are, and that’s where Emery has been for awhile, so we just have to make the most of it.

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There was no reason to put Ozil into this match other than to do him a personal favor, which is kind of what it felt like from Emery.

It’s the 71st minute, you’re 1-0 up in a high-octane match, and you take off Aaron Ramsey, Mr. High Octane himself, in favor of Ozil, who, no matter if you love him or hate him, is unanimously accepted as not high octane.

Naturally, Ozil didn’t do much for the match, and when Spurs leveled, and things got desperate, Ozil was similarly caught without much of an impact to be made because this match was just beyond him. That’s not an indictment of his ability, just an observation of his style of play.

I’ve talked about it at length a couple days ago, so I won’t go too much into detail about who he should have put on instead (Sead Kolasinac), but Ozil did not belong in this match.

Emery has been a practical manager all season long, always making decisions based on what is right for the team, and not who he owes a favor to. Let’s not start giving out favors now.