Back when Arsenal was the personal fiefdom of Arsène Wenger, the players would finish training and sometimes feel they could do it all again. Modern professionals are supposed to need a sleep after training. Wenger’s usually did not.
It is a different story now. Under Unai Emery the players know they have worked, and they certainly sleep. It is one example of the shifting sands at the club but, when the broader picture is laid out, it adds up to revolution.
“We’ve started from scratch, basically, with the new manager,” the goalkeeper Petr Cech says. “It feels like a new club,” the full-back Héctor Bellerín believes. A widespread view has taken root. The only things left standing from the Wenger era are the walls.
Emery is not the most obvious revolutionary but his methods and character contrast so sharply with those of Wenger that he appears like one. In terms of training, match preparation, communication, mentality and the approach to player development and care, everything is different.
What’s more, there is a good feeling in the dressing room. Everybody knows what would have happened if the team had lost back-to-back fixtures at the start of the season under Wenger. But when they did under Emery – against Manchester City and Chelsea – there was no panic.
Equally, after eight subsequent wins on the spin in all competitions and going into Sunday’s Premier League trip to Fulham, there has been no rush to acclaim Emery as the best thing ever. The mood is balanced, quietly optimistic. Perhaps there has been a reaction to the wild emotions of the final part of Wenger’s tenure.
People do not know what to make of Emery and by saying nothing at his press conferences he has given them no chance to pass any judgment on his personality. The Spaniard remains under wraps and it feels entirely calculated. People are trying to work him out. Emery, meanwhile, is just working.
Emery’s sessions are far more tactical than those of Wenger and he has tried to instil his pressing system together with bespoke patterns of play. His idea is that the players should be able to close their eyes and know where options A, B and C are, before choosing the most progressive one. He wants to “generate superiority” – in other words, have a man over in certain areas of the pitch – and he likes players who can play in more than one position.
