Carlo Ancelotti says that his previous wins over Arsenal in European competition have no bearing on tonight’s encounter with his current side Napoli.
The Italian was manager of Bayern Munich when they beat us 5-1 twice in a row, but insists that this will have no impact on what happens at the Emirates tonight, particularly as we’re now under the new management of Unai Emery.
Speaking ahead of the game, the Napoli boss told the press, “Each game is a different story, imagine every season different clubs, different manager so it will a totally different story. That game with Bayern is only a good memory.”
He was then asked about facing a new man in the Arsenal dugout following the departure of Wenger.
“They are different managers with a different style and a different team because new players arrived and so it is a new era,” he continued.
“But Arsenal is still competitive in the Premier League and in Europe, we have a lot of respect of this team, this club and we are honoured to play this quarter-final against them.
“Unai Emery is, in my opinion, a fantastic manager with a lot of knowledge.
“He has experience of this kind of game and the fact he is on the bench of Arsenal will be more difficult for us.”
Emery has selection decisions to make before we face the Serie A outfit, with late fitness decisions to be made over Granit Xhaka and Laurent Koscielny who have both missed the last two Premier League games.
Any reason why Bowie is forth official?
You just hoping everything is going to be hunky dory?
If Lacazette is our starman, we could be heroes.
I mean, we are a club going through changes and we’ve been a little under pressure of late. But we’ve got some golden years ahead and if things go well we could be dancing in the street tonight.
Let’s just hope that after tonight Napoli are afraid of Armenians.
Tonight I hope I won’t feel Low!
I thought it would be the Sicilians.
They’ve played each other 6 times already. So they are not strangers when they meet. Hope we start with intensity today. Otherwise time will crawl.
We could be Heroes if Mustafi doesn’t play like a China Girl when put Under Pressure.
Memory will serve him well to remember how he lost that job with Bayern. Yes Emery, remind him what u did to his Bayern in Paris.
Yes, but I think we have to admit that Emery had a rather better team then than he has now. I don’t see PSG losing to Everton, do you?
He’s a charmer, Ancelotti.
“honored to play Arsenal…” Classy.
Talk about classy – here’s what Emery said about Ancelotti after PSG’s 3-0 win over Bayern that got him fired:
“Every manager knows what life is like for us. We don’t want situations like what happened to Ancelotti. But he’s a great manager with a lot of experience. He knows better than me and a lot of coaches how it works.”
Nice to see a bit of mutual respect in the game.
Treat the opponent with respect and there’s no lost face if you lose and no hard feelings if you win. Quite easy unless you’re Mourinho.
Ancelotti is vastly experienced in European competition and I fear it’s going to be a very tough tie for us over the two legs. Anything less than a two goal cushion in the home leg and we’ll almost certainly be in trouble over there. Let’s try and do the business at The Emirates.