Unai Emery Discusses Arsenal Tactics for Upcoming EPL Season
New Arsenal boss Unai Emery has the luxury of two free-scoring strikers at his disposal next season in the form of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette, but may find it difficult to play both players at the same time.
Lacazette and Aubameyang both joined the Gunners last season in July and January respectively, but rarely played together during Arsene Wenger's last season in charge. Lacazette found the net 14 times in his debut Premier League season, while Aubameyang scored 10 in 13 matches.
And while the pair both stated Emery first pre-season game in charge of Arsenal - an 8-0 win over Borehamwood where Aubameyang scored a 17-minute hat-trick before setting up Lacazette for the Gunners' fifth - an old interview with Emery gives the impression that the Spaniard will opt to pick only one striker up front instead of two.
In an interview with Spanish football author Marti Pernarnau in May of this year, Emery said: "If the ball is in play, you press. If the play stops, you reposition yourself. For me the 4-1-4-1 is the system which facilitates this type of pressing.
"The 4-4-2 is designed more and more for zonal positioning. It's less aggressive, but is more difficult to get past. That's the case with Marcelino's teams, Quique Sanchez Flores' teams, Saint-Etienne when we last played them..."
However, Emery did not completely rule out the idea of never playing a 4-4-2 set-up in his career, stating that he sometimes deployed that formation while at Sevilla.
"I am not ruling out the possibility of 4-4-2. That's not the idea I privilege, but if it allows me to be more competitive, then I'll go towards it without hesitating. We sometimes used it at Sevilla.
Whatever the new Arsenal head coach decides to do, the Gunners will be expected to score a lot of goals next season, with Lacazette and Aubameyang supported by attacking players such as Mesut Ozil, Aaron Ramsey and Henrikh Mkhitaryan.
