Our first game of pre-season took place on Saturday, an 8-0 win over Boreham Wood FC in what was basically the football equivalent of a fun-run.
We now go over ten days without another game, which seems a bit odd to me. I went back to check on what we’d done in seasons past, and last summer we’d played four games – two against Sydney FC and Western Sydney Wanderers, then Bayern Munich and Chelsea – before July 22nd.
Our first ‘competitive’ pre-season fixture this summer doesn’t take place until July 26th when we face Atletico Madrid in Singapore. Then it gets hectic with PSG on July 28th, Chelsea in Dublin on August 1st, and then Sevilla in Stockholm on August 4th ahead of the Premier League opener on August 12th at home to Man City.
I wonder if this is part of the fitness and conditioning strategy laid out by the boss, or if it’s down to our participation in the ‘International Champions Cup’, the ludicrous umbrella branding for these pre-season fixtures. Does our contract with them preclude other games? Boreham Wood, for example, was widely expected to be an ‘Arsenal XI’ – another way of saying kids and youth team – but Unai Emery decided to go a bit stronger because he had so many senior players at his disposal.
I’m not saying this gap between games is a bad thing, by the way. There’s obviously some travel to take into account too with the fixtures in Singapore, but it does feel a bit like a match might have been useful. Emery can take the time to drill the players on the training ground. He will want his team to play a specific way, and we keep hearing about a high intensity pressing game which is different from the way Arsene Wenger set his side up. That requires serious fitness but also organisation and coordination, so having the time to make sure they know what he wants is no bad thing.
Playing games is where you can really get into the nuts and bolts of it though, correct mistakes and misunderstandings, but with four matches in around eight days before our season begins, perhaps that’s enough for him to iron things out enough before we welcome the champions on the opening day.
The running theme of this pre-season is hard work. It’s something we were asked about a number of times for yesterday’s Arsecast Extra, and it seems fairly obvious why there’s such focus on it. Firstly, the players really are being worked very hard. Double sessions and all the rest, but Emery is putting them through their paces, demanding a lot from them physically, and while it’s reductive to think that this never happened before, it does appear as if things are a bit more intense this summer than they have been for a while.
Secondly, hard work is not only impossible to criticise, it banks goodwill among fans because that’s something we can all identify with. How often have you heard someone say they can forgive defeat as long as they feel the players have put in a shift? If they give 100% and come up short, so be it, but the biggest crime a player or a team can commit is appearing to coast through a game.
You lose people so quickly when that happens, and there’s no doubt that under the previous boss there were times when – rightly or otherwise – you got the sense some of the players were going through the motions. That only exacerbates other frustrations but leaving football quality and skills aside, the least you expect is for players to do their jobs. To track the runners, to chase, to run, to harry, to make life difficult for the opposition. And when they don’t, they leave themselves open to criticism.
The fact that there’s a new manager who, at this point, probably doesn’t have any favourites, will play a part too. He’s got to stamp his authority on this squad, so even if you’re a star player, you might find yourself sidelined if you’re not working hard enough because an example has to be set. On the flip side, players with ambition know that they can impress him if they do the hard yards, so it all creates this environment where an immediate standard is set.
It’s up to Emery to maintain that, not just through the summer but throughout the season. I think we’ll see some players absolutely relish it because there’s nothing particularly complicated about this part of it. It doesn’t require a lot of thought or consideration. They’re professional athletes and this is well within their physical capabilities. Others may not like it as much, and I suspect over the course of this season we might see one or two end up towards the fringes of the squad because it doesn’t suit them. So be it. They’ll be moved on and replaced.
I think what’s so encouraging about this – for me at least – is that we’ve long thought the talent was there in the squad, but other more intangible qualities weren’t quite where they should be. Structure, organisation, tactical rigidity, consistency and, at times, effort and desire (as hard as they are to measure in any meaningful way). Emery has, in the nascent stages of his tenure, appeared to address some of those things. We won’t see the effects of that work until we start playing proper games when the season begins, but it’s a good way to get things going.
Right, a reminder that if you haven’t already listened to yesterday’s Arsecast Extra, you can find it here. And when last week I mentioned I was off to meet an Arsenal legend, I wasn’t being facetious. If you want early access to my interview with the one and only Liam Brady, sign up to become an Arseblog Member on Patreon.
We chat about his life and career at Arsenal and beyond, his move to Italy, management, his time in charge of the youth academy and lots more. It’s a really good conversation, and it goes live later this morning on our Patreon page. Access is just €5 per month and you get to listen to all the other stuff we have on their too.
Click here to become an Arseblog Member on Patreon.
So, there you go. Any further news about our hard working hard work in which we work hard (so we can play hard!), can be found over on Arseblog News throughout the day.
Till tomorrow.
