The title may be a bit tongue-in-cheek, but the fact is that the Arsenal players are being made to work a lot harder than they were used to under Wenger. Le Prof regularly gave his player’s extended rests at the beginning of every season, and seemed more worried about overworking the players and causing injuries than making sure they were all up to speed, but it would appear that Emery has other ideas and intends the Arsenal players to be superfit ahead of our first two games against Man City and Chelsea.
According to Paul Dickov, who actually started his career at Arsenal, Emery is already working them hard in his first week of training. “Unai Emery going in there, first home game at the Emirates, champions going there,” Dickov said.
“They will be right up for it and if you look at his previous clubs at Sevilla and PSG, the one thing he does is get them working really hard.
“I’m already hearing the intensity in pre-season is going to be a lot different for the Arsenal players from what they’ve known.
“It’s just going to be a fantastic game for the first game of the season.
“One thing that’s been pointed at Arsene and his teams over the past five or six years is that mentally they’re a little bit of a soft touch.
“The way Emery works, I don’t think that’s going to happen. He’s already made a signing, a good experienced signing in (Stephan) Lichtsteiner, over 100 caps.
“Defensively first and foremost he will have to sort them out, but I think the whole mentality of the club will change now.”
It should be interesting to see how the players react to the extra intensity after years of being treated with kid gloves. At least the new Boss will see which of them are up for it or not….
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