After reading the title, one could assume this to be a negative article and primarily it will be. On first inspection of Emery’s style it is clear that he wants us to play passing football, starting from the back and working our way up the pitch. Now although these tactics work world wide for so many teams (Barca being the obvious one) it doesn’t work for us. Why? The reason why we can’t play this style of football is we don’t have (or choose) a creative number 10. Obviously Özil would slot in perfectly to fix this but Emery has made it ambiguously clear that Özil is done.
So what now?
If Emery isn’t going to play Özil then we have to ditch our plan of slow passing football and adopt a more fast pace counter attacking style of play. When you look at our front 3 of Auba, Laca and Pepe, the predominant factor that stands out is pace, and a lot of it. We have Guendozi which is such a pro for us as he can turn defence into attack like no other player on our team and release our lethal front 3.
To finish, here is my dream XI
1. Leno
2. Bellerin.
3. Tiereny
4. Holding.
5. Luiz / Chambers
6. Torreria.
7. Guendozi
8. Özil / Ceballos
9. Auba
10. Laca
11. Pepe
