Arsenal: Defending the underperforming players

Many of the Arsenal players are not playing very well. But there is one, overarching, and extremely pertinent excuse: Unai Emery and his tactics.

Monday night’s 1-0 loss to Sheffield United was one of the lowest points of the Unai Emery era at Arsenal. Coming out of an international break with a friendly schedule leading right up to Christmas and the chance to establish themselves as serious top-four contenders, the Gunners laid yet another egg. And this time, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang could not bail them out of it.

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But this has been coming for many months. Arsenal have played poorly throughout the season. They are yet to win a game by more than one goal. They had conceded the third-most shots per game in the league prior to the weekend’s action. They were vastly outperforming expected goals models, which provide an analysis of how sustainable a team’s method of victory is or is not.

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In fact, so far this season, the Gunners have not played well. And there are plenty of individual players that are culpable for these lacklustre showings. David Luiz and Sokratis have committed several individual errors. Sead Kolasinac offers little progression, is defensively vulnerable and creates little in the final third. Granit Xhaka has struggled mightily in central midfield. Nicolas Pepe, a £72 million signing, is short on confidence and looks like he does not know how to score, while Lucas Torreira, Ainsley Maitland-Niles and even Alexandre Lacazette have all played below par.

Some of these individuals are deserving of their criticism. Either they are lacking the necessary quality to play at a top-level Premier League or are suffering from a poor period of form and should be dropped from the team or there are athletic, mental or physical limitations that hold them back in the modern game.

But for many of these underperformers, there is one, overarching, and extremely pertinent excuse: Unai Emery and his tactics. Quite frankly, these players are not being put into advantageous, well-suited positions to perform well. Even more importantly, the collective team is playing extremely poorly, which makes it very difficult for individuals to play well within it.

Take Pepe as an example. He is currently being expected to carry a lacklustre side and create moments from nothing. He receives the ball deep in the pitch because there is no facilitator in the midfield, he has two defenders closing him down due to a lack of movement around him, and then he is expected to beat both and curl the ball into the top corner. What do you expect to happen when you put players into these situations?

This is not to defend these players. Despite their disadvantageous positions, there are very valid reasons for concluding that they are short of the necessary standard for an elite Premier League team. But it should provide a pinch of salt for any meaningful arguments made regarding any individual player. Football is more complex than singling out individuals, and that is especially true for an inter-connected, underperforming Arsenal team.

Many of the players are not playing well enough. And they are deserving of the criticism they are receiving. But there is a very real and valid excuse that should be recognised amidst all of this: Unai Emery and his tactics help none of them, and that makes true analysis somewhat redundant.