Arsenal’s Europa League draw may necessitate a lot of travelling, but Unai Emery says the upcoming busy schedule will give him the chance to share playing time around the squad.
The Gunners will cover nearly 12,000 miles taking on Portugal’s Sporting Lisbon, Azerbaijan outfit Qarabag and Ukrainian side Vorskla Poltava in the group stages of European football’s secondary competition.
It represents a lot of time in the air between September and December, especially with domestic fixtures in the Carabao Cup and Premier League sandwiched between a number of Interlulls.
On the draw, Emery had this to say: “First it’s three teams and we’ll have the recipe for them. After this, we want to go far in this competition.
“Each match is different and each match involves a lot of travel. For some, the travel is very long but it’s like that.
“The adaptation for these three teams needs to be positive and we need to face them with ambition and our interest to do well in the competition.”
As has been well-documented, Emery is well schooled in the stresses and strains of the Europa League. The man won the tournament in three consecutive seasons at Sevilla.
“When you play two matches in a week, you have more time to prepare for the matches, to prepare the players physically,” he said.
“When you play three matches in a week, it’s hard. There’s less time to prepare for the match and work physically, but we want it like that.
“We want to play three matches in a week with the league and the cups. After the international break, we are going to play a lot of matches.
“In this moment, we are not playing every player in this squad because we’re only playing one match every week. But I am sure we’re going to use a lot of players after this international break.”
If we can’t win group matches with most of our squad we are in trouble.
Hopefully that will be the positive with Emery. He won’t be afraid to use the length and breath of the squad at his disposal.
We have Leno, Holding, Mavropanos, Lichsteiner, Elneny, Welbeck not to mention Nketiah, Smith-Rowe, Willock all peripherals that will have to rotate and come into play.
There’s also AMN and Kolasinac to return from injury.
The right mix is important rather than too much wholesale changes.
Now Reiss has gone, who is most likely to start on right wing as back up? Danny?
Never mind May, if we haven’t already won the Europa trophy by December then it’s #Unai out!!! After all he’s clearly a Europa wizard with three straight victories. On a serious note however, I’ve just watched our under 23s slay the spuds 2-1 (should have been 8-1). Last season Joe Willock looked a little skinny in our first team. Tonight Joe looked like Yaya Toure as he (with help fromCharlie Gilmour) out muscled out thought and out passed sp**s. He is far to good for that level now and these run of games for the first team should be the… Read more »
Arsenal youngsters are really good.
Honestly not too bothered at how we do as long as we top the group! Would be a nice breeding ground to keep the young ones and those on the edges razor sharp
I have a genuine question, please correct me if I am wrong: as he won EL in 3 consecutive seasons, shouldn’t his first EL victory have qualified Sevilla for CL for the following season? How come they played Europa again?
The rule only changed last season.
The rule has changed in the last of Sevilla’s three titles. Since then manure and Atl Madrid were qualified to UCL being EL champs.
All hand must be on desk this season
We need everyone’s input to succeed
Did it strike anyone else as amusing (unintentionally ironic?) that the manager (sorry, “head coach”) says: “… we want to go far in this competition” when the whole annoying thing about the EL is that you do have to go far just to play the matches — Ukraine, Azerbaijan — you don’t have a choice? It made me smile. Little things…