Unai Emery's Arsenal evolution has fans whispering about the title - but defence remains an Achilles heel

Aditya Devavrat 11:57 25/10/2018
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  • 10-game winning streak. Two points off the top. Sounds like the form and circumstances of a title-contending team.

    So, is that what Arsenal are?

    New manager Unai Emery has overseen a recovery from the side’s two losses to Manchester City and Chelsea at the start the season, with seven straight league wins since those two results along with two wins in the Europa League and one in the Carabao Cup.

    Along the way, there’s been some scintillating football, with perfect team goals like Aaron Ramsey’s against Fulham in the final game before the international break, and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s goal against Leicester City on Monday – two goals that were more out of Arsene Wenger’s dreams than an Emery revolution.

    That is the biggest surprise under Emery – that a manager whose inherent style of high-energy, intense pressing seemed like such a contrast to Wenger’s philosophy has brought out an evolution rather than a revolution in this perennially underwhelming side.

    Arsenal have one more winnable fixture in the league, away to Crystal Palace – the sort of game that would have been deemed a potential banana skin in previous years – before facing Liverpool, at home, in what will be the first true test of the side’s newfound confidence, and title credentials.

    The team has one major advantage on previous iterations, in young Uruguayan midfielder Lucas Torreira. His impact on this side after coming back from his post-World Cup break has been immense, as he’s added defensive solidity and let the attackers play with fluidity – in essence, the sort of holding midfielder Arsenal have been crying out for since the departure of Gilberto Silva in 2008.

    Meanwhile, Ozil, Aubameyang, Ramsey, Alexandre Lacazette, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, and even a rejuvenated Alex Iwobi have been in fine fettle, showing exactly what this team is capable of at its best. The Aubameyang-Lacazette partnership has been an instant hit, Iwobi has improved drastically, and the last ten games have seen one of Ozil’s most consistent stretches of football in an Arsenal shirt.

    Whether that’s sustainable is a different story. Only Ramsey, among these players, has put together an entire season’s worth of consistently good football in the Premier League, so there’s always the chance that Ozil and Mkhitaryan go through one of their familiar spells of listlessness, Aubameyang and Lacazette cool off, and Iwobi returns to previous form.

    How Emery manages a dip from any of his star players will be interesting to see, especially given that his managerial style can be exacting and difficult to sustain over a full season. Paris Saint-Germain’s players rebelled against it last year, and though this squad is slightly more malleable, one only needs to look at what happened across town at Chelsea, when even a title win was not enough to convince everyone of the merits of such gruelling methods, to know how a squad can taper off.

    But the bigger impediment to Arsenal’s title chances lies further back. Though Emery invested in a new centre-back in Sokratis, the back-line still looks shaky. The Greece international has improved Arsenal’s defence, but not by enough.

    Rob Holding still looks some way off being a defender for a top-four club, and though he’s still young, he’s also been a first-team player for two seasons without showing much improvement. Hector Bellerin’s slide as a defensive player hasn’t quite been stopped, even though his attacking output remains enough to earn a starting XI spot as a prototypical modern full-back.

    Laurent Koscielny has resumed training after his gruesome injury from last year, which may be significant, but his form had dropped even before the injury, and it’s too much to ask of a 33-year-old coming back from injury to instantly improve the fortunes of a defense.

    Arsenal have done enough to put themselves in the title conversation, for now, just by lieu of being two points off of City, Chelsea, and Liverpool. But it’s more likely that they end up like the 2013-14 Liverpool side, with a thrilling attack but flawed defence that prevented them from winning the league, than that they lift the trophy themselves.

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