Arsenal wet the bed away from home again – Emery losing his grip

In a disappointing yet unsurprising 90 minutes on Monday, Arsenal lost 1-0 to an inspired Sheffield United, with Emery’s tactics questionable again.

It’s a common theme in the Premier League, and has been for some time. Arsenal, not wearing their famous red-and-white and not playing at the Emirates, which subsequently means that the attractive style of football we often associate with the Gunners gets thrown out the window, and they resort to playing end-to-end fixtures against even the lowest of opposition, while praying that Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang comes up with something. Well, it happened again on Monday, only this time Unai Emery was left exposed with no answer.

Sheffield United were excellent on the night, and used a combination of strength, determination, and exquisite passing to undo Arsenal’s soft spine and win the match 1-0. While Emery’s team will grab the headlines for dropping 3 points, Chris Wilder’s side thoroughly deserved to win, and in truth played football that Arsenal would be envious of at times – especially through the midfield in transition. Their use of set-pieces was obviously excellent as well, as their lone goal came from a corner, which none of Arsenal’s defenders, nor their captain Xhaka, was able to deal with adequately. Without a doubt, the extra week of preparation due to the international break benefitted Sheffield massively.

While an injection of pace and 1v1 quality was supposed to fix their awful away form, even Nicolas Pepe and Bukayo Saka have been unable to make a difference to Arsenal’s woes away from the Emirates. Yet again, it comes down to poor intelligence all across the park, and a lack of a defined structure in the first XI. In 24 away Premier League matches under Unai Emery, Arsenal have just 8 wins. Although that’s an improvement on the 3 wins from 19 away matches in Wenger’s final season at the club, it’s still awful and won’t get them anywhere near their goals.

The Gunners sat in 3rd heading into the international break, but anyone who has kept an eye on this team knew that the performances were far worse than the league table suggested, and it was only a matter of time before the points started slipping away. It was a near-identical situation last season as well, only at that time, Emery had a bit more leeway considering it was his first season. A year later, and the Gunners might be even worse than they were back then.

The over-reliance on such average players like Sokratis and Kolasinac only adds to fans’ woes, especially when Rob Holding and Kieran Tierney are on the bench, now fit, and crying out for minutes. Both of them, along with Hector Bellerin, drastically improve the Arsenal team and should all be among the first names penned into the teamsheet every weekend. Meanwhile, a former fan-favourite Lucas Torreira continues to be either used incorrectly, or not used at all, while Mesut Ozil’s Arsenal career under Emery is following the latter trajectory as well.

Now, it’s starting to become common knowledge that Arsenal are going nowhere under Unai Emery. Even with a golden opportunity to get top 4 handed to them on a silver platter this season with Spurs and Manchester United doing so poorly, Arsenal have done nothing but scrape past teams at home and get outplayed away from home, to make top 4 still seem somewhat of a longshot. The most worrying thing may just be their inability to control matches. A team with such immense and expensive technical talent should not be playing end-to-end, nailbiting fixtures on a weekly basis against average sides.

Emery’s inability to pick good starting XI’s or implement an effective and clearly-defined tactical system essentially means that he has been relying on individual talent far too much. Well, it looks like Aubameyang’s ridiculously impressive early-season form is slowing down, and now, Emery has nowhere to hide.