Villarreal head coach Unai Emery won a prominent reunion with his former club Arsenal. Defeating Gunners with a 2-1 score might be considered a small reward for Villarreal, but ‘it’s still a victory’ says, coach Emery. Villarreal failed to take advantage of Dani Ceballos being sent off in a frantic Europa League semi-final first leg on Thursday.
Villarreal head coach Unai Emery has encapsulated the semi-final match against Arsenal (2-1) in the Europa League.
“We had chances to score a third goal – that was our plan. The penalty in our goal was undeserved and overall we deserved to win,” Emery told BT Sport. “As we go away, we will follow the same plan: to control the game and prove ourselves.”
“We played a good match,” Emery said. “It’s a bit unfair that we didn’t get a better result, but it’s still a victory and we will try to finish the job in the second match. Things went for us and against us but we have to keep believing,” said Emery.
“It was a difficult challenge before the match and it’s still difficult. But with everything on the table, we have won, we have the advantage,” he added.
Manu Trigueros and Raúl Albiol scored first-half goals to give the Spanish club the edge ahead of next week’s second leg in London. “In the end we allowed them to stay alive. We won, but looking at the match we should have done better. They leave with a bigger prize than they deserved,” said Trigueros.
Villarreal is 90 mins away from the final of the Europa League which is scheduled to be played on 26th May in Poland. Prior to that, the winning team of the first leg will visit the Emirates Stadium to give Arsenal another tough match in the second leg on 7th May.
