It’s something of a trademark now – the long-range screamer from Mohamed Elneny – and our Egyptian midfielder delivered again on Friday, to level up our pre-season friendly against Nurnberg.
Elneny came on at half-time, with the score 2-0 to the hosts, and had a sighter just off target seconds after the restart. Then Gabriel Jesus pulled one back, before Elneny equalised moments later, a right-foot rocket from fully 25-yards which got Arsenal purring again as they went on to claim a 5-3 victory.
After the game Elneny said it’s something that he particularly works on in training. Here’s his post-match interview in full…
on the game…
I’m happy for the performance today, the lads, everyone just gave it 100 per cent. Unfortunately, we were losing 2-0 in the first half. Then in the second half everyone had to show a reaction, and this is what we were working on during training. Mikel told us we have to keep pushing ourselves to just improve in every detail. This is what we showed in the second half. We go and we put in a reaction, we flipped the result for us and it was impressive.
on whether he only scores screamers…
It’s what I love! I love to score from distance. It’s what I work on every day in training. After every training, I work on it, when I finish training, I keep shooting from distance. Because I know shooting from distance can create a winning [scenario]. If the game is level and we need someone to shoot from outside, they can change the game sometimes. This is what I have to do, work on helping my team in every way,
on what pre-season is about…
It’s about getting better in every single day, physically, mentally. To talk to each other, to help each other in the way we train and play games. I think the way we train is really hard, everyone pushes hard. We know we have an important season and we have created a really, really good atmosphere between us. This is what we are looking for and this season is going to be different.
on how hard the young players have been working…
Of course they come to help us and we help them of course. We are a team, we help each other every day, we have talented players to help us in the new season. We are happy and inshallah this season we are going to be good.
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