Will Unai Emery be negative or positive against with his midfield against Bournemouth?
For some reason Unai Emery loves to put out a negative midfield in the Premier League, we have all seen his tendency to go with three defensive midfielders. Will he be just as negative against Bournemouth?
Emery usual does the negative midfield line-up away from home or against the top-six so you would hope he would be more adventurous against Bournemouth. I am not so sure he will though.
I fully expect him to go with Lucas Torreira, Matteo Guendouzi and Granit Xhaka. Which means no creativity from the likes of Joe Willock or Dani Ceballos.
You just know that Xhaka plays, he is almost guaranteed a start under the Spaniard and Guendouzi appears to be his other go-to man. That leaves just one midfield spot up for grabs and I just do not see Emery looking anywhere else than Torreira.
This is an issue because it does snuff out creativity from the midfield to the forwards, Torreira, Xhaka and Guendouzi just do not have the vision of Ceballos or even Willock.
If there is a time to be positive it is surely when you are at home against a midtable team but Emery has that hesitation about him and I do not see it changing for this game.
It is significant the difference between the Arsenal Europa League line-ups and Premier League line-ups. One is very positive, one is not and I think the results tell you which is the better option.
Just seems it will take time for Emery to realise that playing three DM’s is not the way to go.