What would Arsene Wenger have thought of his old team's first match under their new manager, Unai Emery?
In many ways it was the same old Arsenal: the usual smooth technical play laced with occasional suicidal errors, the usual Özil and Mkhitaryan flitting on the periphery unable to do any real damage, the usual enormous gap in quality and confidence between them and Manchester City, the usual mass exodus from the Emirates long before the referee had blown the whistle on the usual comprehensive defeat against this opposition.
There was even a kind of tribute to Wenger's youth project years, as Arsenal's midfield contained a 19-year-old French man who had recently joined the club almost unnoticed for a minor-league fee. Matteo Guendouzi was born the same day Ryan Giggs ran through the Arsenal defence to win the 1999 FA Cup semi-final replay, and his experience at senior level amounts to 30 matches for Lorient, most of them in the French second division. His selection was both a gigantic vote of confidence from his new manager and a testament to how thin Arsenal's resources in midfield currently are.
The willingness to back his own judgment in risky decisions is part of what distinguishes Guardiola
There was one notable difference from the late Wenger years, which was that Emery’s Arsenal had at least one tactical idea that they were obviously trying to put into practice as a team. It was plain that the coach had told his players to target City’s build-up play between the goalkeeper Ederson and the defenders, and in the second half, interceptions close to City’s area yielded a couple of chances that on another day would have led to goals. Specific tactical preparation of this kind is potentially a great leap forward for a team that has spent the last few years making it up as they go along.
Cech falls short
Among Arsenal's many problems in the match was the fact that City were targeting their build-up at the other end in much the same way. When Arsenal paid £22.5 million to sign Bernd Leno from Bayer Leverkusen, it was natural to assume that the German would become the new first-choice keeper ahead of the 36-year-old Petr Cech, who made a league-high six errors leading to goals last season. Emery likes his keepers to play short from the back, which was another reason to think Cech's prospects might be limited.
And yet Emery preferred Cech. “Most of my career I was asked to play long, so this is a pleasant change for me,” said Cech after the game, with what sounded like a nervous giggle. “It’s very useful when you want to be the team who creates and controls the game.”
Unfortunately the way Cech does it, it’s mainly useful for the opposing team. It’s not that he is technically incapable of an accurate 10- or 15-yard pass to a team-mate. Rather the problem is that, not having had to think much about build-up play for most of his career, he has a tendency to choose the wrong passing option under pressure. At one point in the first half he played Guendouzi into trouble just outside Arsenal’s penalty area, then nearly compounded the error with a humiliating own goal. At that point Arsenal were already 1-0 down, after Cech had let Raheem Sterling’s shot past him without making any effort to save it.
He was unsighted for the Sterling shot, and overall he did not have a bad game, saving well from Sterling later in the first half and stopping Agüero in a one-on-one in the second. There was nothing he could have done about Bernardo Silva’s strike for City’s second goal. And yet still you wondered why he was playing, since everyone knows that you don’t sign a goalkeeper for a club record fee and then leave him on the bench. Cech is going to be dropped sooner or later, so why not get it over with?
Ruthless Guardiola
The obvious comparison is with Pep Guardiola's treatment of Joe Hart, who was told on day one that he would not be in Pep's plans at Manchester City. Remember that this decision was not without its costs for Guardiola. He was criticised for being unfair to Hart, and then he was made to look foolish on several occasions by the poor form of Hart's replacement, Claudio Bravo. But the willingness to back his own judgment in risky decisions is part of what distinguishes Guardiola. And while he did not dump Hart just to send a message to the other players, the meaning of it was plain to anyone with eyes to see: this guy means business.
Emery was showing us that he is a different kind of coach. Cech is respected by his team-mates and he is a senior figure in the Arsenal dressing room. Maybe Emery felt that to drop him at the very beginning would be too radical or perhaps too politically difficult; that a softly-softly approach would seem fairer or more reasonable to the players. As Guardiola says, the players won’t respect you automatically because you are their boss: you have to seduce them.
But no manager ever seduced a group of players by being a nice guy. Now is surely the time for Emery to be radical, to show his squad that things are going to be different from now on. If any club was crying out for a fresh start and a new direction, it’s Arsenal. If continuity was what the players wanted, there would have been no need for Wenger to leave.
