As Gary Lineker said, Arsenal’s game against West Ham coud have ended up 6-6, but in the end it was the Gunners that put their chances away to get their first win under Unai Emery. Hector Bellerin admitted that it had been a difficult encounter but the Gunners have been working hard and he knew that it wouldn’t be long before the new system worked. “I wouldn’t describe it as relief.” he told Arsenal.com. “We’ve been working hard now for the last two months, so we knew it was just a question of time. We had two tough games to start after lots of changes at the club. We knew it was a question of time, a question of scoring the chances that we had. Today was that kind of day. We still could have been even more efficient, but even though we started behind in the scores, we turned it around and I was very happy with the reaction of the team as well.
“Like I was saying, it was not about pressure. It was just, as I say, a question of time. We knew we were playing at home with our crowd, it was a tough team, they’ve had a very good summer window. They’ve signed loads of top players, so even though they were still getting used to each other as well, we knew it was going to be tough. I think the score doesn’t show how hard it was on the pitch, but as I said, it was just a question of time because the whole team has been working really hard and really well.”
Although Bellerin admitted it was hard work, he said it also helped that the team knew each other very well, which West Ham certainly didn’t as they had 8 new arrivals on the pitch! “At the end of the day it’s football, right, and that’s what we’ve always been playing and there’s always a few adjustments here and there that we need to make in order to play the style that the coach wants to play, but of course we’ve been playing with each other for a long time.
“So even though the system changes, at the end of the day we’re the same players so we still understand each other and that helps. It’s all about the work of the team and we’ve been working really hard this week and we knew what we had to do in order to score goals and that’s what we all did together.”
Arsenal did look excellent going forward, and it is obvious that they are improving in that department. Do you think maybe the squad should spend a little time concentrating on defending for a bit? Or is Emery going to go for the ‘we’ll score more than you’ philosophy?
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