I think all Arsenal fans were surprised at how effective Alex Iwobi was when he started against Chelsea, and despite one glaring miss, he did manage to score one goal and make an assist for the other goal as well. The improvement was palpable, and Iwobi himself puts it down to Unai Emery’s new training methods. “He demands a lot.” Iwobi said on Arsenal.com. “He’s a lot more intense, a lot of high pressing and keeping the ball so that it benefits us if we have the ball. It’s good for us, especially the attackers who like to have the ball a lot.
“It’s making me feel a bit sharper, I’m doing things with a bit more intensity. It’s not just for me, though, I feel like I’m helping the team a lot more. It’s benefitting me a lot more.
“Whenever something in the system changes, you have to prove yourself again. But wherever you go, you have to prove that you’re better than whoever else is on the team. At a team like Arsenal, that’s always going to be hard so I always have to be on it in training and matches.
“I’ve got to be different. It’s going to be hard because we’ve got so many attackers and so many world-class players, so I’ve just got to prove that I’m on that level or as good as them so that I can be ahead of them, which is my aim.”
We were all hoping that Emery and his new team of coaches would start improving the players we had considered mediocre under Wenger. It certainly seems to have worked with Iwobi, and Mkhitaryan has also told us the new training is working, so maybe we can hope the same improvement for most of the squad and we could find ourselves with a very talented team of stars all of a sudden!
Sam P