Arsenal: The 12 games Unai Emery must master

Arsenal face one top-six team in their next 12 Premier League games. This is the period of the season that Unai Emery must master, both for his standing and the season’s success.

Last season, Arsenal had the chance to seize a top-four finish, a Champions League place, and an ideal end to Unai Emery’s first year in charge. But then, in one disastrous week, it all came crumbling down.

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The Gunners were coming off a sensational quarter-final victory over Napoli in the Europa League. They gritted out a 1-0 away win against an excellent Watford team, sensationally their first away clean sheet of the season, and were searing towards a top-four finish.

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Then, in one week, they lost three successive games, the first to Crystal Palace at the Emirates, and the two successive away matches against Wolves and Leicester City. Suddenly, what was looking like an extremely promising first season under Emery was ruined. All in the space of seven short but painful days.

This disastrous week was a microcosm for Arsenal’s problems throughout the season. While under Arsene Wenger, the Gunners relentlessly dispatched the lesser teams but then toiled when pressured by better opposition, with Emery, it was the very opposite, the team excellently drilled and motivated for the big games but lacking the necessary consistency against the lesser teams to claim a top-four finish.

Last year, Emery guided his team to 12 points in ten games against top-six opposition. They beat all of Chelsea, Manchester United and Spurs, drew with Liverpool, and only lost to Chelsea outside of the top two, and that was the second match of Emery’s tenure, at Stamford Bridge.

Emery’s problems came when he needed his team to establish their identity and impose their style on lesser teams. And it is often results in these type of matches that actually make the difference when all is said and done — Liverpool and Manchester City were so far ahead of the rest because of their belligerent brilliance against lesser opponents.

Now in his second season, and again looking to secure Champions League football, Emery will have the chance to prove that his team has progressed, improving in places of weakness. After facing two top-six teams in their first four matches, in which they lost one and were unlucky to draw the other, Arsenal now face just one top-six team in their next 12 league matches.

This kind run, which extends right through to mid-December, includes some awkward fixtures like West Ham away, Wolves at home and Leicester City away, but there are also a series of matches against teams that Arsenal should be dispatching with relative ease and necessary consistency. They play the three promoted teams, Watford, who currently sit bottom of the league, as well as Brighton and Bournemouth, both of which currently reside in the bottom six.

If Emery is to prove that he is more than just an adaptable tactician, and if Arsenal are to secure top-four finish and Champions League football, it is runs of fixtures like this that they must master. These are the 12 games to flourish in. Now, they just have to do it.