Arsenal 0-2 Man City: Unai Emery Blames A Lack Of Belief After Opening Day Defeat

By The Editor
on 12th August 2018

Arsenal 0-2 Man City: Arsenal loses Unai Emery’s first game against the reigning champions…

Arsenal head coach Unai Emery blamed a lack of belief in our ideas as the main reason behind our opening day defeat to champions Manchester City, Sky Sports reports.

Emery took charge of his first competitive game and it was always going to be a tough start against the best team in the land, and it was always interesting to see how the Spaniard would approach the game.

It was clear from kick-off that there was a plan, with Aaron Ramsey spearheading the press and almost playing as a central striker in a move to stop the visitors building through midfield.

However, we failed to control their wide men and we were often faced with a two-on-one situation out wide which eventually lead to their opening goal through Raheem Sterling.

For Emery, that was born out of a lack of enate belief in our pressing and gameplan in possession.

“In the first half, we weren’t as good as City and 1-0, for us, means we had to try and change in the second half,” Emery told SkySports after the game.

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“We needed to believe more in the moment, try to do more aggressive pressing with the ball and break their defensive lines on the pitch going forward.

“In the second half the team got better in the match but going down 2-0 closed our options down in the game. [One positive] from the second half was the speed of our game, we had chances to make a better result.”

Our transition from Arsene Wenger to Emery will take time and the latter hasn’t been given any favours in terms of the Premier League fixtures.

We travel to Chelsea next week and any teething problems will be exposed once again – even if we can see slight improvements.