Unai Emery believes that Arsenal are in a ‘positive’ environment even after going down 3-1 in the opening leg of the Europa League Round of 16 fixture against Rennes.
The Spanish manager told the press ahead of the second leg on Thursday, “We are very demanding on ourselves. It is a positive issue. We want to play top matches against the best teams. In the Europa League, we are finding some results, like the last round versus Borisov, difficult.”
“This is the same with a bad result in the first round. It will be a tough match but our demand for our best performance is very high. I want to play matches with difficult results, against tough players.”
“We need to be together and create a big atmosphere with our supporters to help us. We need to play with high emotion but taking clever decisions on the pitch. These are both important issues. We need to control the 90 minutes, maybe more.”
“Our thoughts are now positive. We are thinking to play 90 minutes with our game plan and our best tactical decisions on the pitch and being organised with our quality.”
“In the first 90 minutes, they beat us and tomorrow, we will want to show here it can be different, but with a big respect to them and also knowing we need all the players with the focus and to control our emotions and control the different situations and scenarios that can come in the 90 minutes.”
Alexandre Lacazette has been cleared to play against the Ligue 1 side after his appeal against a 3-match ban got accepted. Now it is up to Emery to choose his best lineup with most players available to him for selection.
