Anyone wondering how long it would take Unai Emery to fully understand what it means to be Arsenal head coach need wonder no longer. All it took was one game to anger Sam Allardyce by having the temerity to play short passes along the ground.
"This is the manager's fault. It's his fault," he said of Arsenal's 2-0 defeat to Manchester City on Sunday. "We are getting obsessed with this stupid 'let's play out from the back'... (it's) utter rubbish to play like that all of the time." To which the obvious reply is: if you are trying to implement your style with a brand new team, abandoning your principles in the very first game is not a very effective way to go about things.