Arsenal: Tactical flexibility fine, but it’s time for Unai Emery style

Arsenal have been very tactically flexible under Unai Emery in his first season. Such versatility is nice, but it is now time to implement a defined style.

Under Arsene Wenger, Arsenal would play in the same way every single match. It did not matter the result needed, the standard or style of the opposition, whether it was home or away, or even what formation they used. The overarching approach was the same. It did not work.

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But that is not because Wenger was to wrong to believe that you should pick a particular system and approach and stick to it. He wasn’t. It is just that his system and approach was not good enough — and not executed at a high enough level — to be the dictating, dominating one in every situation.

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Pep Guardiola has a tactical set-up that he implements almost every game. The players must adapt to him. Jurgen Klopp is the same. Barcelona have played in the same way — there have been different wrinkles, but the underlying processes are very comparable — for more than a decade.

Under Unai Emery, however, Arsenal have moved in a very different direction. There has been no system for all the players to learn, understand and execute. This has not been Emery dictating how he wants each and every player to play in every single scenario on the pitch. Instead, tactical versatility has been the name of the game, as Emery recently said before the Europa League final:

"“I want us to be a chameleon team, able to play in possession, in static attack against close opponents, or to counterattack.”"

There is nothing wrong with being tactical flexible. In fact, it is an important trait that I believe every good team should be able to master — Wenger, for instance, was too stubborn, too entrenched in his own ways.

Klopp has used different shapes at Liverpool, the 4-2-3-1 used this season and a more vigorous press implemented in previous seasons. Mauricio Pochettino flips between a back four and back three fairly frequently, although the back four is his clear preference. Even Guardiola has used the back three at times as well. But these slight tactical changes, and they are slight, all still fall under an overarching philosophy that underpins the approach of the whole club, and that is something that Arsenal are yet to figure out.

In previous outings, Emery did have a clear style: a 4-3-3 with mobile, athletic centre-forwards, a back-to-goal target centre-forward, and two extremely quick and direct wingers, but because of the personnel he inherited in north London, we have not seen that formation in that fashion at all. The most recent, well-used shape as a 3-5-2, which is extremely different from his historical norm.

It is time for Emery to settle on a style and implement it throughout the football club. What that style is, I am not sure. I would guess that it is still the 4-3-3, even though it was not used last year. But it is time to see one, because Arsenal are aimless without it.