Jose Mourinho has suggested Unai Emery to use the front three of Aubameyang, Lacazette, and Pepe in a clever way.
Former Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho has suggested Unai Emery to use the front three in a specific way to get the maximised output.
The Spaniard, for the first time this season, started the front three against Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday in the 2-2 draw. They did not click like they would have wanted to, as they trailed by 2 goals before Lacazette pulled one in the first-half injury time. Matteo Guendouzi picked out Aubameyang in the 71st minute to level the score.
In the post-match analysis, Jose Mourinho gave three choices for Unai Emery to use the front three and score more goals.
He said: “I think they are very good players and normally they should be on the pitch all three together,”
“I think Aubameyang probably he likes to play in the middle because he feels if he’s in the middle he can score more goals. But maybe he can score as many goals playing on the left.
The Portuguese International referred Liverpool’ style of play, where Roberto Firmino gets deployed as the number 9. Jurgen Klopp’s side have one of the most feared attackers in Europe. However, he divulged that Lacazette would struggle to play the Brazilian’s role in this system.
“What happens at Liverpool is [Roberto] Firmino drops back, drops in between the lines, and then he gives more space for [Mohamed] Salah and [Sadio] Mane to attack these diagonals. I would see Aubameyang playing on that left side of Liverpool and scoring a lot of goals.
“At Arsenal, Lacazette doesn’t have that quality, but they have two options. One is to play, instead of like today with three midfield players almost in a straight line, to play how they played in the last 10 or 20 minutes with two [sitting midfielders] and one No.10 that can feed the three without bringing Lacazette in between the lines.
“Another situation that is very possible is to bring Pepe from the right and in many occasions bring him to the inside. Many teams nowadays defend with a back four but build with three in the back, and by doing that they can put for example a right-back completely wide almost as a winger and bring the winger to the inside.”
“So if Pepe plays more on the inside, he can feed more that diagonal to Lacazette and do what Guendouzi did for the last goal [for Aubameyang], Pepe doing that from the right with his left foot finding Lacazette on the diagonal.
“So they have lots of options. These three players are very good. They had on the bench [Henrikh] Mkhitaryan, [Mesut] Ozil, [Dani] Ceballos who are players also who can give things. I think from the middle to the attacking areas they have a lot of solutions to develop.”
Following his comments, there was silence from the other pundits. They knew Mourinho had more knowledge of the game than they would ever have.
It left presenter David Jones concluding with: “Interesting. I’m sure Arsenal are watching and listening.”
