As Unai Emery said this week, the highest position possible in the Premier League must be Arsenal’s biggest priority, but the fact is that few of us really believe we have any chance of winning it, so it is nice to have a separate target that is achievable, like the Europa League.
Emery has won the trophy three times before, and it was obvious from last night’s team selection that the Spaniard is taking it very seriously indeed, and this was backed up by Henrikh Mhkitaryan who said after the 4-2 win: “He’s won this competition three times and it’s very important for us, for Arsenal, because we’re playing in this competition to win. We’re not just playing to participate. It’s very important because if you win then you can get a spot for the Champions League, so we’re trying to win every game and we will see where we get.”
And the scorer of two of our goals, Pierre Emerick Aubameyang, also made it clear how important this competition is for our ambitions. “Of course [we want to win it], especially for me because I didn’t play in the Europa League last year and I am really happy to be back in this competition. We want to go to the final of course, it is an objective and hopefully we will do well in our next games.
“We know that the Premier League is long, there are a lot of games, but these ones we need to win straight away, we have to perform quickly so it is good to start with a win and the next game will be important for us also.”
Last season the Group Stage games lacked interest for us fans knowing that Arsene Wenger didn’t think that the trophy was important as proven by playing reserves and youth players. Now we can take a real interest and believe that Emery will do his utmost to win it. And with that attitude, we may even achieve it!
Sam P
Depends on whether there would be reinforcement(s) in the next transfer window or not
I wish Arsenal can bring an energetic winger in the mold of Hazard, Willian or Isco in January
Let’s get Moses from Chelsea,he seems surplus there but he may be of great use to us.Plus we may get him on the cheap.I also hope Smith Rowe starts getting some game time with the first team,he can help our season.
Only if he is cheap. Because he did not score a lot in the front, but he was very good as an attacking wingback
Otherwise I’d prefer Arsenal to gamble with a younger winger that can score a lot of goals from the wings
So we go for Moses when we got rid of The Ox, Walcott a d Perez.
Moses is as dangerous or even less dangerous than those players we got rid of.
How our Arsenal have dropped. We are going for second rate, cheap or over the hill players today. What the fliphas happened to us being serious competitors against the likes of City, Chelsea, United, Barca, Madrid etc?
The Emirates Stadium move that was meant to catapult us to the next level seems to just have been a rues or a fraud by the Arsenal board.
Gotanidea, I don’t think any of the three players you mentioned are wingers and would be very upset if you called them wingers, then again you come from a different generation to me.
Definitely not in the mold of George Armstrong or Danny Clapton
Absolutely Kenny and the three players he mentioned I would class as inside forwards, a term of course not of his generation.
Geordie and Danny , two people who could play on three wings between them. Geordie played on both wings at same time. very often. A scandal that many of today’s young “know little” kids would not even know who he is. EVEN DANNY CLAPTON USED TO CHANGE WINGS OCCASIONALLY. Proper wingers both, unlike the ones he mentioned who are not real wingers at all.
George Armstrong is one of my all time favorite players.
There are some good young wingers about (around 22) in Spain some of whom are “two footed”.
We can call them anything, but basically they tend to operate in the wings and those types of goalscorers Arsenal really need
Personal I would go all out to get Wilfred Zara from palace ,kids a beast when on form ,although I don’t like his diving ,I could live with that
With Zaha I agree
How well would Wilfred Zaha play in Arsenal under Emery? He is probably the difference between Crystal Palace being in the top 10 or being in a relegation battle; however he wont come cheap.
The team is fine, be satisfied
We should get:
1. Moses from Chelsea
2. Jesus from City
3. Mohamed from Liverpool
Exactly
Amen
Is there a Jehovah playing anywhere?
Meh, I think we will qualify for the knock out stages of the Europa league whether we play the reserves or the first team. As we saw yesterday, the teams playing are really not any good. What worries me are the recurrent defensive lapses at the end of every otherwise routine win. Sooner or later we will be made to pay with some dreadful last-minute equalizers forcing us into frustrating draws. Also, I must say I was underwhelmed with Lichtsteiner’s shaky performance. I hope he was just rusty from sitting on the bench for a long time as I simply cannot imagine any radical defensive improvements in the long term if the joke of a defender Bellerin is reinstated as the starting RB.
Yeah, a team that cost a total of £11 million and we made bloody hard work of beating them.
I’ll love it if we can go throughout the season without conceding a goal. that will mean we either draw or win all the match which i believe we all deserve for what we had gone through in the last 10 years but we all know that is possible. Personally I’ll get bored in watching such game as time goes by and won’t bother watching the game since i can all predict the outcome. I know it is in our nature to always question the performance & outcome of every game we played but this way over the board as it shows we think little of and think of the opposition. Conceding is part of the game and it should not matter how many conceded as long as the team win IMO. Besides, how many team has not conceded at all this season.
The trouble is we have conceded nearly as many as we have scored, I think it’s something like 11-14.
I know Declan but i think the emphasis should be laid on the winning considering we are in transition.
The first thing George Graham did when he arrived was to stop the conceding.It didn’t work out too bad for him during his first five seasons which included two years of transition introducing at least 6-7 youth players through the ranks.Two Premiere League titles and a League Cup in five seasons.This followed One FA Cup in 16 years before he arrived.Just shows that sometimes working on the defensive side of the game can actually work.
Phil “Can sometimes work”? As if there is ANY OTHER WAY to build a successful side!! It is VITAL that after a shambloic defence for a whole decade, we NOW bring in proper defenders. and coach them intensely, as George Graham did day in, day out. If anyone considers the likes of Bellerin and Mustafi to be proper defenders , then they live in a fantasy world of their own. So many of todays kids have never actually seen a top class defender wear our shirt. They would wet their pants with delight if they ever saw Adams, Bould, Keown, Dixon, Winterburn at work. But many of them have not. THAT is why, knowing no different, they think (in their fantasy world) that we have proper defenderas today at Arsenal. There is not one, not even ONE today, who is fit to even lick the boots of Graham’s famous defence. Until we put the defence right we can forget about EVER challenging for the title again. REALISM!!! I see ZERO defence improvement so far under Emery, though I hate saying it at this early stage. But I don’t. If anything, we are even worse than under Wenger.
Have to agree with John I remeber last year Michael Owen saying how he use to Shi7 himself in the tunnel before the game started whenever he was up against Adams,Bould,Keown,Dixon and Winterburn
I said it when Van Dyke was playing for Celtic that his the one for us then he was sold to Southampton and you know the rest
Tas, The van DYKE situation , where Liverpool went all out to get him, while we sat on our hands and were content with the shocking defence we have had for many years past(and still do) perfectly sums up the difference between a club with huge ambition and another club with none. Devastatingly sad for us fans, who are the ONLY ones who really care at all. If you doubt that last statement, then ask yourself who among the players, staff and manager, plus the owner would still watch us and pay loads to do so, while taking NO WAGE FROM THE CLUB.
Agree that it’s still early days and there is time to sort out the defense. It’s still a worrying sign we are just as bad as we were under AW. If our goal this season is to get back into UCL, it’ll me made much harder playing most of our games knowing we have to at least score 2 goals just to get 3 points.