Unai Emery’s in-tray: what is waiting for Arsenal’s new manager?

Discipline and motivation

A quick highlights reel of Arsenal’s away performances from last season will tell Unai Emery all he needs to know about how an injection of organisation and motivation are paramount. The concentration lapses, the losing of leads, the lack of robustness, need knocking on the head from day one. Whether it was complacency or anxiety or a weird mixture of both, it needs addressing. The players should be ready to welcome some new instruction, new guidance, new ideas to give them a fresh start. The fear of surrendering points has become mental as well as tactical and technical. Time to sweep bad habits away.

Stop leaking goals

Emery is picking up a team who just endured statistically Arsenal’s poorest season since the 1980s in terms of goals conceded. The new manager will presumably want to discuss some changes of personnel in that department as well as team approach. Individual errors have been prevalent. Shkodran Mustafi switches off, Laurent Koscielny’s achilles was a problem even before his serious injury and Per Mertesacker has retired. So Arsenal should be in the market for another experienced body. The goalkeeping situation and defensive midfield anchor are part of the bigger defensive picture too, and improvement there is also needed.

Get the fans back on side

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The number of empty red seats that became a feature of last season set alarm bells ringing. For a worrying number of a fanbase that had already gone through a few years of the Wenger In/Wenger Out debate frustration segued into apathy. Paying for tickets and choosing not to attend sends out a stark message. Emery needs to galvanise the team and by extension excite the crowd. It will not be easy to unify a fractured support who were at times almost being pushed to take a binary position – either unconditionally supportive or critical – but a promising start will help.

Get the best out of Özil and Ramsey

Given a limited budget compared with some of the league’s more lavish spenders, raising extra money by selling an asset is a consideration. Ramsey has a year left on his deal. Özil signed an extension last year but is one of the players whose response to Emery’s new world order will be fascinating. With an upsurge of discipline expected, will he be out with a mystery illness quite so often? Midfield balance has been an issue for a while and the freedom that both Ramsey and Özil enjoy means tactical discipline is not their favourite thing.

Give youth a chance

Ivan Gazidis made a point of mentioning this as part of the job description for any candidate, to continue the old Arsène Wenger trick of developing rather than just buying talent. Wenger, in his final season, progressed Ainsley Maitland-Niles, Reiss Nelson, Joe Willock and Eddie Nketiah from the academy, and the young Greek defender Konstantinos Mavropanos made some bullish strides in his cluster of appearances towards the end of the campaign. A couple of slightly older players can improve with more meticulous coaching about positioning and decision making such as Héctor Bellerín and Rob Holding. Arsenal will hope Emery can push them on.