Former England head coach Sam Allardyce on Monday slammed Unai Emery’s approach in Arsenal’s 2-0 humbling at the hands of Manchester City in the recently played Premier League match at Emirates stadium. Before calling Arsenal’s style of play utter rubbish, he said that when one is locking horns with a champion, playing from the back is a very bad idea. However, he conceded that when you are champions, then it doesn’t matter how you play.
A new-look and redefined Arsenal took on the defending champions on Sunday at home but miserably failed to cause any problems to a resolute Pep Guardiola’s side. In fact, the Gunners were torn apart by a rampant City attack led by Raheem Sterling and Bernardo Silva.
Giving his two cents after the match, Sam Allardyce dumped the entire blame on Unai Emery for Arsenal’s dismal performance. “It’s the manager’s fault. Don’t ask someone to do against Manchester City what you shouldn’t do. What does Manchester City do? Press, press, press. So why do you try and play out from the back?,” questioned Big Sam.
Continuing his rant, Allardyce further said that even the Arsenal fans cheered when their side dropped one in the opposition’s half. “You cannot just force ‘the only way to play is this way’ in this country. We’re getting obsessed with this stupid ‘let’s play out from the back, split the centre-halves either side of the 18-yard box and go and play from there’,” he added.
The former West Ham United boss called it utter rubbish to play like that all the time. However, when questioned that even Manchester City played the same kind of game against Arsenal, Allardyce said, “When you’re the best you can do it.”
Unai Emery added 5 new faces to Arsenal after taking the reins of the club from long-serving Arsene Wenger, but after the unfortunate outing against Guardiola’s men, it appears like the Gunners will have to do a lot of hard work in order to yield results.