Hard work and sexy football bringing the joy back to Arsenal

Two games into the Premier League season and Arsenal were on no shortlists to challenge for the title.

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang celebrates after scoring Arsenal's second goal against Leicester City

Two games into the Premier League season and Arsenal were on no shortlists to challenge for the title.

The Gunners seemed at very best a work-in-progress under a new coach, well-regarded Basque Unai Emery, who took over after internal bloodletting brought an end to the 22-year reign of Arsene Wenger.

The schedule did Emery no favours; Arsenal’s teething troubles in adapting to a very different — and demanding — style of playing were ruthlessly exposed by champions Manchester City in a 2-0 season-opening loss and then again in a reckless 3-2 capitulation at Chelsea.

But after a 10th straight win in all competitions yesterday — including seven league victories — Arsenal find themselves just two points adrift of leaders, City and Liverpool, and only behind Chelsea on goal difference.

They are in the thick of the title race, though Emery was quick to hose down such talk after beating Leicester City 3-1 at home on the back of a sublime performance from captain-for-a-day, Mesut Ozil.

“For us, it’s not important to think of the end (of the season),” he said. “It’s important to think of the next match against Crystal Palace … and to continue improving, working, doing our way.”

Emery is not one to stray too far from the process. He believes in the incremental gains that come through hard work and constant polishing.

But what is catching the eye is that as impressive as the results have been, the performances have been better. “Sexy football” as Ozil tweeted after yesterday’s win. The second half against a pesky counter-attacking Leicester was as good as any under Wenger but what was missing was the constant feeling that more goals wouldn’t just be scored but also conceded.

And that wasn’t by happenstance. If there is a single player who represents the chasm between the Wenger regime and this collaborative collective of experienced football men from successful clubs like Barcelona and Borussia Dortmund as well as Emery it is diminutive Uruguayan Lucas Torreira.

Quite simply, Wenger would never have signed the defensive midfielder.

Wenger’s experiment, certainly in the latter half of his tenure at The Emirates, was to field a team made up almost entirely of what the Italians call fantasisti and challenge other teams to keep up with them. A beautiful aesthetic in theory but in practice, all-out attack meant no league titles for Arsenal since the 2004 Invincibles (a team which, not coincidentally, contained Patrick Vieira and Gilberto Silva, both talented but very tough midfielders).

As it eventuates, defending is important in football, and with a shaky back four, Arsenal needed steel to go with the skills of players like Ozil, Aaron Ramsey and Alexandre Lacazette. And so with Wenger gone, they spent €30 million — a modest sum these days — on a relatively unknown 22-year-old from Sampdoria.

What Arsenal knew was that no player won more tackles, won more fouls or made more interceptions in Italy than Torreira did in the past two seasons. What they didn’t know is that he would be the linchpin of the Emery revolution: not just a destroyer but a more-than-useful passer and extremely composed for one so young.

With Torreira, who scratched his way to a professional career from poverty, in place to protect and cover for them, Arsenal’s front four can run amok. And they have. No one more than Ozil, who can be irresistible when he wants but invisible when the mood doesn’t strike him.

Arsenal made him one of the highest-paid players in the world earlier this year but even the most loyal fans question the investment in such an enigmatic player.

Under Wenger, Ozil had a reputation for being indulged. Ramsey, who is seeking a blockbuster new contract that looks like not being offered, last year said Ozil was “the teacher’s pet”.

“He gets a few extra days off than the rest of us,” the Welsh captain said, “He’s always in the boss’s room asking for something and he seems to get it.”

With Emery, who had to deal with Brazilian diva Neymar at Paris Saint-Germain, Ozil hasn’t had favoured-son status.

The Spaniard requires every player on the pitch to work; the cornerstone of his approach is not the possession game Wenger preferred but to hit teams on the break. Working without the ball is not negotiable and Emery made it clear early in his tenure that he would not play — or substitute — players who didn’t do the work, no matter how big their names.

Indeed, while he praised the 30-year-old’s performance against Leicester — the German playmaker scored the equaliser and had a hand in both goals by Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang — he wanted to be clear that Arsenal wasn’t being driven by star power.

Emery singled out Swiss defender Stephan Lichtsteiner, who filled in at left fullback, as deserving as much praise as Ozil.

“We want to enjoy (the style of play) and we want to win, but if you want to win and you want to enjoy, you need to work,” he said. “Only enjoying to enjoy, I think is not good. But enjoying with work I think is a good combination.”