Emery: Arsenal Defeat At West Ham a Lost Chance To Catch Up With Chelsea

Arsenal manager, Unai Emery has described The Gunners’ 1-0 defeat to West Ham in the Premier League at the London Stadium on Saturday as a bad result and a lost opportunity to catch up with Chelsea in the fourth spot, Completesports.com reports.

Former Arsenal midfielder, Samir Nasri set up Declan Rice for West Ham’s solitary winner in the 48th minute.  Emery’s team only fought back lamely and failed  to bag any away point.

The Gunners remain in the fifth position on 41 points from 22 games following the defeat. They have Manchester United, on 38 points, closing in on them. United face Tottenham at Wembley Stadium tomorrow (Sunday).

“I think the result is a bad one. We lost a great opportunity to take three points and get closer to Chelsea and the other top-four teams. But we lost,” Emery regretted while fielding questions from journalists at the post match press conference.

*We wanted to do a better match but we couldn’t control the match like we wanted to. Looking at the chances in the 90 minutes for them and us, I think maybe the result is not what we deserved.

“In the game plan, in the control, we need to improve our ideas. We could not do that. We didn’t concede a lot of chances but we conceded metres on the pitch and these metres gave them a lot of corners. From one corner, they scored, and then the match changed. 

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“We needed to attack more and better but today, defensively we needed to work well. We created chances but it wasn’t enough to win. Maybe in the first 20 minutes when we created some chances, that was the moment where we thought we could win the match, but then after it was difficult because we didn’t impose all the things we wanted.”

Emery also answered questions concerning Mesut Ozil’s absence in the match.

“We had enough players to win today and impose our gameplan, and impose our tactical quality against them. We also respect them and they have good players. With their supporters here, they feel stronger. Maybe for the bench, some attacking players could have helped. But I think we had enough with these players,” he said.

Probed further on  why he didn’t use Ozil, Emery said: “We decided that the players here were the best for this match. We’ve won with him, we’ve lost with him. No one player makes the difference between winning and losing the game.

“Yes, but I can say he’s working with us normally this week. Like I said to you, we’ve won and lost with him. Today the players who were here are the players who deserved to be in this match. 

“We could have won or lost, like we can with him. We continue working with every player because they are all important, but today the decision was to come with these players.”