Press conference

Emery - Why we improved in the second half

For the opening 45 minutes against Everton, Unai Emery cut a frustrated figure on the Emirates Stadium touchline.

The visitors had come close on numerous occasions to breaking through, but after the restart we were much improved. So what happened to cause this change?

This is what he told the media:

on the win…

Victory is very important for us. It’s three points for playing our way in the table. Then we can analyse the game and the 90 minutes, but firstly for today the victory is very important.

on whether he was about to make a sub before the first goal…

Yes. We needed to change something in this moment to give us another individual quality on the pitch. Then we scored the goal and I decided to stop it and think again about who we need next.

 

on whether Lacazette would come off…

I don’t think it’s important, but maybe yes! Football is like that.

 

on improving in second half and starting slowly…

In 90 minutes, there are moments for the opposition and there are our moments. We needed our goalkeeper to stop their attacking moments and we needed our strikers to score our attacking moments. Today is a good example. Then we want to control the game more in the first half, because we didn’t have the ball like we want. We conceded two or three important chances to Everton, but in the second half we spoke in the dressing room about stopping their attacking moments with better positioning on the pitch. Also, individually, each player helped to push more in the second half. I think we only conceded one chance from a free-kick which Petr Cech saved very well and there were no more. In attacking moments, we played well in 20 minutes to win this match and in the last minutes we defended very well near our goalkeeper and in our box. 

 

on Sokratis…

We don’t know now but the first analysis is that the doctors will wait until tomorrow. It’s his knee but I’m hoping it’s not too serious.

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