Arsenal and Unai Emery: The culture is changing

Ainsley Maitland-Niles discussed this week how Unai Emery has improved Arsenal defensively this season. The way he spoke illustrates the change in culture at the club.

When Unai Emery arrived at Arsenal a little under a year ago, there was an immediate and important shift in focus of the team. As illustrated by the signings made in his first summer, many of which were completed extremely swiftly, the most attacking was a central midfielder. The other four were all defensive-minded players or goalkeepers.

Find the latest episode of the Pain in the Arsenal Podcast here — Pragmatism, clean sheets, and Unai Emery

That shift in recruitment focus told you everything you needed to know about how Emery was going to build his team. And it is in a very different manner to how Arsene Wenger has for many years.

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What Emery is doing, at its very core, is shifting the culture of the club. Wenger had an extremely attacking philosophy. It is was one of the foundational characteristics of his era. But Emery is now altering it for a more pragmatic approach. And this week, this shift in perspective has proven worthy: two clean sheets on the road to lead the Gunners into the top four and the Europa League semi-finals.

Ainsley Maitland-Niles, after the second of those, a 1-0 win over Napoli in Naples, was asked about how Emery has improved both the defensive record of the team and the European nous:

"“We’re learning different methods in Europe because sometimes we need to be more like the foreign teams, stick with it for 90 minutes and just grind out results. And it’s going well at the moment. You can score as many goals as you want but if you don’t defend properly then the game could go either way, as we saw on Wednesday night in the Champions League [as Tottenham knocked out Manchester City on away goals]. I think we’re gelling together very well. The manager is working with a back four, a back five, so we all know positionally what to do, not to dive in in the box and not to give silly fouls away around the box as well.”"

Words are often spoken as an overflow of one’s culture. It was Jesus that said out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. And it is similar for organisations too. The cultures of them often motivate what is said. For Maitland-Niles and many of the Arsenal players and staff, the perspectives that Emery teaches and instils spill out in what they say.

And the way that he speaks here is extremely different to how players spoke under Wenger. Former players have talked about how Wenger would deny the defensive side of the game, that his focus was on possession and pretty, attacking football, not on instaling a resolve and winning mentality, especially in Europe.

But Maitland-Niles speaks about becoming more European, about navigating ties with greater nous, self-awareness and conservatism, characteristics that Wenger would rarely discuss in his outings with the press. It is a shift in thinking.

This change stems from Emery himself. It is he who has motivated the change in the very personality of the club. The culture of Arsenal football club is different. And, for now, it is a good different.