The true genius of Arsene Wenger Arsenal shows where Unai Emery has so far failed

Under Arsene Wenger, Arsenal changed the game in the Premier League and his ideals can still be realised in the modern game but not if the Gunners follow their current direction under Unai Emery

Arsene Wenger and Patrick Vieira lift the Premier League trophy.

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Arsene Wenger was firmly ahead of the curve when he arrived in England.

He was unveiled as Arsenal manager in 1996 having been released from Japanese club Nagoya Grampus, with his big move surprising the large majority following the Gunners.

Few managers have made such an impact on one club, let alone a competition or country like the Premier League and England.

The Frenchman's methods were revolutionary at first. After arriving in England, to be met with a football culture more associated with endeavour, fight, direct play and aggressive tackling, he wanted Arsenal to play a different way.

Wenger saw the unpredictability of the Premier League, with the ball constantly loose and matches in a state of flux, and set about taking control.

Instead of hitting it long, forcing consistent turnovers and battling in the middle of the park for large periods, he instructed his players to place an emphasis on keeping the ball.

His philosophy would later became known to some fans as Wengerball - especially those who followed Arsenal in the internet age - which was best expressed as intricate, sharp, possession-based football, with skilful combinations in small spaces.

The Frenchman was a champion of fluidity. Positional interchanging was encouraged to get the best out of players who sought to use the space on the pitch in interesting and effective ways. His team thrived on being afforded such a high degree of individual and collective freedom to invent on the fly.

With the rise of the analytical viewpoint on the game, the general objective for most teams has come to focus on taking plenty of shots while restricting the opposition to as few shots as possible.

If that can be achieved then the team with the most shots in their favour, the fewest shots against them, will be considerably more likely to secure a positive result than if the shot count was even.

Rather than the age-old approach of 'you have a go, we have a go', Wenger too desired a more measured style of play through which he hoped to dominate his opponents.

The erratic and entertaining nature of the English game may stem from a willingness to embrace an element of chance but the Frenchman wanted to get a grip on those elements.

For the first-half of his 22-year reign in north London, he employed what may look like a relatively straightforward 4-4-2 formation when sketched out on paper but that shape performed differently for his Arsenal team compared to other sides when in possession.

Less importance was placed on crossing as a means of attacking. Wide players such as Robert Pires and Freddie Ljungberg darting inside rather than down the flanks. It was the team’s full-backs that sought to guarantee width and deliver crosses as they pushed forward and overlapped down the flanks.

Pires and Ljungberg, although they were technically known as wingers, played in a more inverted manner. The pair linked up by combining with Dennis Bergkamp and playing through balls to Thierry Henry instead of running towards the corner flag to hit a hopeful cross into the penalty box down the byline.

Henry himself is so often credited with revolutionising the role of the striker, especially in England, and he too behaved different to most of his Premier League contemporaries, drifting out into wide positions before using his pace and dribbling ability to dart into the box.

Bergkamp too would drop deeper into the hole between the bands of the midfield and attack to invite runners into the space ahead of him to trigger even more switches in positioning and shape-shifting in the final third.

It could lead to utterly bewildering and unpredictable football from the perspective of teams charged with trying to stop and contain the Gunners but in truth it all came back to the careful choreography made possible by Wenger and his work.

The controlling, meticulous aspects of Arsenal's game hadn't been witnessed in England before, and they largely contributed to the side's unbeaten Premier League campaign in 2003/04.

It was as if the Gunners had more under their control on the pitch than teams gone by as they made better use of the ball and the available space to unleash the potential of a team packed with the talent to exploit one-on-one battles all over the pitch.

Wenger almost certainly benefited from an impeccably built squad, with players such as Henry, Patrick Viera, Ashley Cole and Sol Campbell able to comply with his exacting technical standards while also competing physically with forceful opponents.

On the defensive side, Arsenal exhibited a more conventional approach.

Pressing as a means of defending hadn't truly been established to the extent that is known and understood today.

Once the Gunners lost possession they would often retreat and soak up pressure until the ball was regained.

In most cases, the North London club were still able to recover the ball relatively quickly as they already had countless players in the opposition half due to their dominance in possession. This often forced opponents into hitting aimless clearances long which simply allowed Arsenal to receive the ball, take control and set about building another attack.

The Gunners played what would now be considered a contemporary possession game without the intense urgency to close teams down as a collective that has become vital to many sides in the modern game.

For Wenger, this is what would come to be problematic for his teams as the years progressed in north London.

Arsenal retained their offensive credentials throughout most Wenger's tenure. It was their approach to defending that proved to be costly.

Other coaches from outside the Premier League, such as Jose Mourinho, Rafa Benitez, Jurgen Klopp, Mauricio Pochettino and Pep Guardiola, brought other influences to the English topflight.

The best methods by which to stop an opponent and control games would change as their influences took hold, even if it could be said that the way their teams attacked still owed something to Wenger.

For Benitez and Mourinho, tactical systems were to be adopted for isolated matches solely to nullify the strengths of the opposition instead of opening up teams to expose gaps to the skill of their players as a priority.

The former Chelsea and Manchester United manager was on punditry duty when Tottenham Hotspur beat Ajax in the Champions League semi-finals last season. His comments on the match epitomised his perception of football. “The philosophy lost against the strategy,” he said.

Benitez and Mourinho came to stand out as obvious counter-points to Wenger. The Frenchman, in contrast to his Iberian rivals, often appeared to overlook the strengths of the opposition in favour of trusting in the quality of his players to cope and overcome any resistance.

Former Arsenal midfielder Stewart Robson once recounted how Gilberto Silva had explained Wenger’s preference to ask individuals to take responsibility for danger over taking a more organised approach to the defensive side of the game.

“He said he had to cover the full-backs, they had to make sure when they lost the ball, they were in good positions,” he told ESPN. “At Arsenal it was the players that decided that when they had the Invincible run, not the manager.”

That tendency had worked in the past because Wenger was able to rely upon elite footballers, many of whom he brought to Arsenal from previously untapped or underappreciated areas of the transfer market, but his opponents soon learned how to catch up.

It was no longer possible to send out a team able to be self-sufficient when placed on the same pitch as Mourinho’s Chelsea, for example.

Even before his best years at Arsenal had passed, Sir Alex Ferguson and Manchester United had been able to close the gap on the pitch at times by winning the individual battles.

At the start of the 2010s, Wenger had moved on to setting up his team in a 4-3-3 and later a 4-2-3-1 shape that was initially designed to get the most out of Robin van Persie.

He could still spot a player but he was losing his best talent to transfer bids from richer clubs quicker than he could keep teams together to develop, grow and win the biggest honours.

In 2011 he lost Cesc Fabregas to Barcelona while Samir Nasri joined Manchester City. The Frenchman wasn’t the first to be plundered by the Abu Dhabi-backed force emerging in the north west. Emmanuel Adebayor and Kolo Toure had left for the Etihad in 2009.

Van Persie left for the other side of Manchester in 2012 with Alex Song also moving on to Barcelona.

Arsenal’s best and brightest had always been eyed by teams across Europe but working against a smaller budget the Gunners tried to get by through signings that were inferior to the players that were lost.

Season after season the quality levels continued to ebb away, further exposing Wenger’s approach to the limitations of the footballers he needed to rely upon to seize the initiative and make up the difference.

This flaw was only further highlighted once Guardiola, Klopp and Pochettino became established at Manchester City, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur, respectively.

All three have sought to be assertive and positive with the ball but have combined their ambition in possession with defensive fortitude. They are at the front of a new wave of managers who have captured the essence of Wenger's entertaining and attacking football while revamping how a Premier League team works without the ball.

In 2018, the chasm between the Frenchman’s ideas and those of Guardiola were laid bare as Manchester City faced Arsenal twice inside a week, winning both matches 3-0.

The Spaniard's team showcased an attractive, elegant style of football worthy of the legacy Wenger has helped establish in England, while demonstrating an intensity without the ball that the Gunners could not match.

Arsenal did try to press City but their efforts were limited to individuals closing down opponents without the cohesion or compactness that makes it work as a system. It appeared that the fine details had been missed.

Wenger’s side still managed to maintain the capacity to outshoot opposing teams even up until his departure, with an average of 15.1 hit during his final year in the Premier League compared to only 10.1 faced.

Typically, though, Arsenal fell short against top quality opponents and against aggressive teams of a certain type and style.

He stepped away in 2018 - an unhappy ending that saw the Frenchman leave without a league title in 14 years and no follow up to his run to the Champions League final in 2006.

The three-time Premier League champion had ultimately been caught in the crossfire after the relationship between the fans and the board had turned toxic and deteriorated into street protests and plane banners.

In his place came Unai Emery, the man identified by the club to modernise Arsenal and Wengerball.

He was essentially tasked with upholding the principles of his successor’s inventive possession game while instilling the up-to-date aspects that had been missing, especially in defence.

The 48 year-old has been in charge for almost a year-and-a-half at the time of writing and it's reasonable to suggest that the Gunners have actually regressed under his tenure.

Arsenal no longer attack with quite the same understanding or variety in the final third, and without the ball the team appear just as fragile as before.

It’s true that these problems emerged during Wenger’s final seasons but after promising fans that his team would be the protagonists in games, pressing high up the pitch and taking possession for themselves, Emery has not delivered.

Furthermore, the control that Wenger managed to hold over teams in terms of shots amassed has been lost.

After 11 rounds of Premier League matches in the Spaniard’s second season in charge, Arsenal have had 11.7 shots per game compared to the 15.2 shots per game they have faced.

In Emery’s first campaign, the Gunners took 11.6 shots per game against 12.2 shots faced.

The 'you have a go, we have a go' culture that Wenger initially abolished has returned, with matches at the Emirates now being finely balanced on a regular basis.

A remodelled version of Wengerball, that takes on the values of that style of play and brings it up to date in the modern game is certainly achievable. The expectations on Emery aren’t unreasonable.

Ultimately, Wenger was ahead of his time. He saw a path forward that was different to many of those who were around him, and he was a pioneer for introducing an all-encompassing possession style that governed more aspects of the game than any of his contemporaries in England.

Time caught up eventually, though, and his defensive practices became obsolete which allowed competitors to gain an edge over the Emirates club.

The legacy of Wengerball can still be restored, but it remains to be seen whether Emery is the true heir.