Unai Emery spoke to Sky Sports following the 2-0 defeat to Man City. This is what he had to say about his first game in charge of the club – and his English is still a work in progress so we’ve cleaned it slightly up in places but also left as is in others because we don’t want to misquote or change the context of what he said.
What did you make of your team’s performance today?
I think the result is like the things on the pitch are happen [basically saying the result was fair based on the performances of the two sides], but the first half I think we were a little less better than City.
1-0 for us is to try to change things on the pitch in the second half, believe more in our moment in the match to do a bit more aggressive pressing. When we can break their lines on the pitch. I think in the second half the team are getting better, but also the 2-0 close our options on this game.
What did you learn about your team today?
We are a new team to improve. For me today is a little frustration to lose but also is one space more for continuing and progressing, and also is one process. Our performance we’re thinking to improve, and the first match is good to play against Man City, but also maybe a bit more difficult than our season is this year.
What was the big positive, and the biggest negative?
The second half, the speed, we had chances to do one score and to do something in this game. The first half for me, we need to believe more than our performance.
Its a pleasure to listen to this guy speak.
Says it like it is!
I think today was expected. I had hoped we scrape a draw some how but there was a clear gulf in the 2 sides, no complaints about the result. I look at this season as one of stabilising the side to stop the rot and maybe nick a little trophy. I think we can all see now the slow erosion of the club these past 10 years. I recall a match at Highbury 1982 where we lost 0-2 to Liverpool who were the man city of the day. We were totally outclassed on the day by Dalglish and co. but… Read more »
It’s as if his english worsened.
How close minded do you have to be? Have you ever learnt another language in less that 3 months?
Do me a favour. It’s a credit to him that he’s even trying to speak English.
Exactly, thank you! It’s as if English wasn’t merely a minority language but the most widely spoken language in the world currency!
Took Venka 20 years to learn to say ‘Look ..eeeeeeee’ !
Interviews are hard enough even at the mother tongue, but you are so much more successful than Emeri, so please mock him.
Strange logic you employ there, malaka. I’m not a successful football coach, hence I can’t mock a middle aged man, working in England, who can’t speak English?
The most widely spoken language is Mandarin.
Most sources (that I just checked) estimate that the total number of English speakers in the world is about 1.5 billion. China’s current population is 1.4 billion (Wikipedia).
But that figure includes people speaking English as a second language. Remember that in his last job Emery had to speak French to the media, and come neck when you think you can switch between foreign languages fluently at work. Them we might listen to your point of view
Totally preposterous comment but I’m going to thumb you up for “VENKA” 😀 😀
😀
Yes! I’m speaking that other language right now.
Seeing as how you think i’m just another native bloke, I must seem that good 🙂
Back to topic, He has spoken better a previous times, I’m just making an innocent observation.
so jog on.
His English has greatly improved. At least he has the courage to speak in English and can make himself understood
The universe has really been acting up this week, first Martin agreed with me, and now I agree with him….
WTF is going on????
Will normal service resume?
Or after years of bickering, are we destined to become BFF’s?
He seems to be a mix of random words interspersed by coherent sentences now
I don’t know you from Adam, so I can’t be sure if you’ve ever tried, but articulating a thought in a language you’ve been learning for a few months is not at all easy. Props to him for trying.
I’ve lived all over Europe, and mangled more than my fair share of languages. You can practise and practise and practise, but then under pressure suddenly sound like you’ve never even looked at a dictionary and picked up grammar from a chimpanzee you met at the zoo. In my humble opinion, Emery did way better than the first time I tried to speak Spanish to an audience. (They were at least polite enough not to laugh at me). He’ll pick it up in no time.
This is a reminder to all who talked of ‘Top Four’ and similar. He has inherited some good players – but a poor team. And the amount of kitty money available has restricted what he can do. Having said that, all the newbies played with aplomb. I particularly liked Gendouzi for wanting the ball all the time and not being phased by his mistakes. We start with two really tough fixtures. But we will pick up thereafter. Neville was right when he said it will take three or four transfer windows to pull things together in the way he wants.… Read more »
After 3 or 4 transfer windows Arsenal is a mid table team with a budget less than West Ham’s and Everton’s , so today for me was the day that showed Arsenal is finished as a big club.
I really believe we will make top four, it would be great to get a result against Chelsea but whatever, after that we will I am sure start to see a top four team emerge. We can do this, it will be tough but we can do this.
Wenger in
LOL
Özil as 10 from the start, Unai…
The goal for year always was going to be top 4 so while we never want to lose, losing to the likely champions isn’t nearly as bad as losing an early game to someone we need to take points off. It’s clear emery needs time to mold this team
I thought it was a strange team selection, to be honest. I can’t understand why he didn’t put Mesut behind Laca and Auba with Torreira holding. It looked like he was trying to fit Ramsey and Granite both in the team, but it made us unbalanced and everyone seemed a bit below their best. After Ramsey went off and Torreira and Laca came on we were a lot better, I thought.
Our midfield trio should definately be Torreira, Gendouzi and Ozil. Ramsey should rotate with Mkhi in the right wing. Sentiments aside, he shouldn’t be starting in midfield.
Maybe Bould should do these post-match interviews, or better still, get Emery an interpretor. Not being funny or disprespectful but we need to understand what he’s going on about.
He already speaks English better than Dennis Wise.
I wonder if they’ll be a direct correlation between improvements in the team’s performance and Unai’s fluency in English this season?
The only thing I don’t get is him naming ‘5 Captains’. Our no 1 skipper may be out all season & the others? How many are going to play every game, maybe he should re-asses after today.