Unai Emery preached an even keel when Arsenal was struggling in Premier League play, so he didn’t get ahead of himself after one of the biggest wins of the season either.
After Arsenal defeated Manchester United 2-0 to hand Ole Gunnar Solskjaer his first Premier League defeat of his Red Devils managerial tenure, Emery wanted to make sure his team remained focus on the task at hand.
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“We are positive,” Emery said after the match. “When we were struggling in the table...we took balance in our mind. And now after this victory we can be positive but not change our idea. It’s continuing and it’s going to be difficult, our way is we think game by game.”
“We are happy today, we are better in the table after this result but Chelsea is with us, United is with us and Tottenham also is with us. The last matches are all difficult matches.”
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Above all, Emery wanted to make sure his team focused on repeating performances. The Gunners have not lost since February 3 in league play, a run of five matches, but they fell 3-1 to Stade Rennais in the first leg of their Europa League Round of 16 match midweek. With just three days between games, the Gunners rebounded well.
“Being consistent is very important,” Emery said after the win. “At the moment I think we are playing with confidence each match and today we showed everybody that. We must be calm, be patient, continue improving and we know, like on Thursday, one match can change a lot with one red card, one goal. Controlling emotion is very important. Today we worked very well with the emotion during the 90 minutes because they had some chances, we needed our goalkeeper, or centre-backs, our defensive players. Keeping this consistency in our mind is very important.”
Arsenal has the return leg against Stade Rennais to come on Thursday, and then the international break sees the Gunners rest until their next Premier League match on April 1.