Unai Emery has said that he was pleased to see his Arsenal side progress into the last 16 of the Europa League as it will help to improve his player’s mentality.
The Gunners went into tonight’s early kick off at the Emirates with a 1-0 aggregate deficit, following their defeat against Belarusian outfit BATE Borisov last week.
Arsenal got off to an ideal start when Zakhar Volkov turned Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s cross into his own net after just four minutes, before defenders Shkodran Mustafi and Sokratis Papastathopoulos scored either side of the interval to round off a 3-1 aggregate win.
Speaking after the game, Unai Emery revealed that his game plan was to keep on scoring goals to fend off the threat of an away goal from today’s visitors.
“We wanted this result but also we wanted to play for our supporters here, to improve and build our mentality after first match away, which was not good. We did our best to come back (in the tie) and the team worked very well,” Emery told BT Sport.
“But we also had to take precautions because if they scored they can be back in the match. Our message was if we score, carry on. If we scored two, carry on. Carry on and carry on. We needed two, three or four goals for more precaution in the 90 minutes.
“The players did our game plan as we wanted and they arrived in the box a lot with a lot of crosses. And we showed the efficiency we went, which we didn’t have away.”
