With the Onana Luiz central midfield we won’t do it.
I’d slightly disagree with this. It’s not necessarily a bad midfield but it’s the team and Unai learning that if the opposition is bottling up the midfield then we have to find a way of utilising width more effectively. We did it brilliantly in the last 15 minutes yesterday and it was quite apparent that Leeds were hanging on as we cut them to ribbons time and again. You could see it in the first half as Leeds were bottling our left side and midfield but Cash and Bailey had acres of space which we didn’t capitalise on. Teams are cute now with bottling up central areas against us so Unais 3 Tens system needs tweaking and preferably without Bailey and Buendia starting.
Agree with this. Ideally we'd be turning our opponents' tactics into an advantage by, as you say, getting us using the width of the pitch more effectively.
The downside being that we'll be more open to the counter, so the challenge is to find a balance.
I doubt Emery will do this, though, as he clearly hates the idea of putting early crosses in, and has hammered into the players the need to recycle the ball back across the pitch and retain possession.
Which is why I think our performances will remain poo until at least two-thirds of our first choice midfield are back.
