No matter how badly Arsenal have been performing, the fact is that we now have 8 wins in a row under our belt, but all that is irrelevant this weekend when we just have to focus all our energy on beating Fulham and getting another three points under our belts. As Unai Emery said: “Usually I don’t look behind, every day I’m looking at the next matches – what’s in front,”
“For me, whether we win or lose, every match is giving me a lot of information about how to improve. Every coach wants to win, but it’s not easy to do that.
“For me the challenge is every day and every match – to look back to the last match is not good for us and not for me.
“My only focus is on Sunday against Fulham, to get three points to continue going up in the table.”
By now the coach should be having a much better idea of how to maximize his players to get them to fight for every point in every game. It looks like he has found out how to get a few clean sheets as well, which may have been helped by the introducing of Bernd Leno and Rob Holding into the starting line-ups. Now that we are having to rotate more hopefully he will make further changes that can improve the side as well.
I really like the idea that Emery doesn’t think that his top players need to be rested and believes that any professional should be able to play twice every week easily if called upon and should not want to be dropped. “Every team wants to do the best performance in the Premier League because it’s the first competition for us and also in the cups and Europe.
“The top players want to play a lot of matches. I have experience too because I’m playing in Europe for the 12th consecutive season, six in the Champions League and six in the Europa League so my habit is also this.
“We are going to balance each matches physically with the players but these players are prepared to play Thursday and Sunday and then we have players to make changes for some matches. But if I decide to play someone for three matches in a week, they are available to do that.”
I love that attitude, and hopefully it will rub off onto the players. It certainly seems to be working so far!
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