Emery impressed by Arsenal’s staying power

London (AFP) – Unai Emery praised Arsenal’s intensity after they leap-frogged Manchester United to move into the Premier League’s top four with a 2-0 win over Southampton on Sunday.

Emery’s much-changed team were on cruise control at the Emirates Stadium thanks to early goals by Alexandre Lacazette and Henrikh Mkhitaryan. 

And now the Arsenal manager hopes his players can maintain that intensity as a congested fixture list forces him into further squad rotation.

Emery made five changes to the starting line-up that beat Bate Borisov 3-0 in the Europa League on Thursday and he expects to make more for Wednesday’s home league game against Bournemouth.

“This is the moment we can use fresh players with energy and quality,” he said. 

“We need to mix to save players because we are going to play a lot of matches. 

“It’s important to give good performances like today’s even when we have to change some players in the first eleven.

“On Thursday I was very proud of them in a dangerous match and today we decided to make some changes and it is very important that we carried on our intensity and our performance with different players.”

There was some risk in that approach. Although in the bottom three, Southampton had lost only one of their previous six league matches. 

They had also been the team that ended Arsenal’s 22-game unbeaten run with a 3-2 victory at St Mary’s in December -– which Emery admitted had provided extra motivation for his men.

But while Saints were lively going forward, some of their defenders looked as if they were still on the beach in Tenerife, where they had spent a week of warm-weather training.

The sixth minute summed them up. Jan Bednarek’s pass sent Nathan Redmond through on goal and he cut inside Shkodran Mustafi only to see his left-foot shot blocked by Arsenal goalkeeper Bernd Leno. 

– Intensity –

The ball was played to the other end, where the unmarked Mkhitaryan volleyed Alex Iwobi’s cross back into the centre. 

It hit an offside-looking Lacazette and bounced past Southampton goalkeeper Angus Gunn.

“They have fast attacking players like Redmond and in their first action they found space behind our defenders, but you need your goalkeeper sometimes and Leno played well today and helped us a lot,” Emery said.

Leno also had to deal with a fierce cross-shot from Matt Targett before Arsenal doubled their lead in the 17th minute thanks to a gift from the visitors’ defence. 

from World Soccer Talk https://ift.tt/2GYLaHf