Manchester United midfielder Juan Mata’s contract runs out at the end of the season and has been linked with a move to Arsenal in the summer transfer window.
Mata and the current Arsenal manager Unai Emery have some history, as they worked together in their days at Spanish club Valencia. Mata has undergone some resurgence in the recent weeks starting games after spending much of his time on the bench at the start of the season.
In an extract from Emery’s biography which has been published by The Telegraph, the Manchester United star describes just what it is like as a player to work under the 46-year-old. “I think what’s special about Unai is the way he communicates. In his talks, he used to write three, four or five things on the board: those were the points he was going to bring up. Sometimes it was five phrases or metaphors he was going to explain. I’ve never seen that with my other managers.
“They usually revolved around phrases about positivity, camaraderie, the values he wanted to create in his team. He communicated by means of the points he had written down. His talks could go on and on because he didn’t notice the time, but what he said was always intense, and he would ask you questions. It became a kind of seminar.”
Mata also gave some insights on what it is to train under Unai Emery, “Unai is the manager who works hardest at set-pieces. And he would change tactics depending on who we were facing. He was constantly coming up with new ideas.
“We were often surprised, because it could seem very complicated and you had to concentrate a lot, apart from anything else trying to remember what the plan was for different games, because it changed all the time!
“I remember above all a free-kick we used to do in the middle of our opponents’ half. Instead of sending the ball up the middle of the pitch where everyone was crowding in, we would put two players on each side and two in the centre.
