Unai Emery has made another minor change from the way Arsene Wenger used to do things, with his post-Qarabag plans for the Arsenal squad.
The Times report the various ways that Emery and his team plan to deal with the difficulties of travelling so far for a midweek game. For a start, the players will remain on British Summer Time. There’s a three-hour time difference in Baku, but the squad will still wake up and start their day as if they were on London time.
After the game, they’ll travel back to London, arriving at 4am. The big difference is that they won’t have a training session on Friday afterwards. Under Wenger, the player would have a light session the day after a European game.
Perhaps this is just a system being implemented for this game in particular. There won’t be many European matches as far away as Azerbaijan and the players will usually be able to arrive home a bit earlier. Even the match in Ukraine, against Vorskla, should take a couple of hours less to get to and from.
We’ll have to wait and see what Emery does after Arsenal’s next European away game in Lisbon later this month.