Emery not blaming Leno for Wolves loss | OneFootball

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·24 April 2019

Emery not blaming Leno for Wolves loss

Article image:Emery not blaming Leno for Wolves loss

Unai Emery refused to blame goalkeeper Bernd Leno's erratic display for Arsenal's crushing Premier League defeat at Wolves.

Ruben Neves scored a stunning free-kick to put Wolves ahead at Molineux on Wednesday with Matt Doherty and Diogo Jota also on target before half-time.


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Leno misjudged Jonny Castro Otto's cross to allow Doherty to nod home, then he looked to be beaten too easily by Jota, leaving Arsenal with a mountain to climb.

Although the Gunners scored a late consolation through Sokratis Papastathopoulos, their Champions League qualification hopes have been dented by back-to-back Premier League defeats.

Emery, though, opted not to point the finger of blame at Leno after Arsenal fell to their heaviest Premier League defeat against a newly promoted team since 1994.

"I don't want to speak about individuals. We need to continue together and not look at one player, defensive or attacking," Emery told a news conference.

"We need to think to recover our confidence, our good moment. When we were in the worse moments we can recover to take possibilities like we have now.

"In the last two matches we lost good options but the last three matches we are going to play we will play our possibilities."

Arsenal have lost six of their past 10 Premier League games away from home and Emery conceded he was frustrated by his team's latest poor performance on the road.

"I usually am very critical of myself. I am angry with myself when we didn't do the game plan I wanted," Emery added.

"My idea, my style is to look in front and find the solution, not who is the player who is playing worse or not doing what we spoke of before.

"First I think of the solution. That is to think about Sunday and take the possibility to come back with our best performance to take the three points.

"When we win, we win together and when we lose, we lose together. In general I think we have possibilities to be in the top four.

"We lost the chance to have it in our hands but we will continue and take the opportunity on Sunday."

Wolves became the first newly-promoted team to earn 50 points in a Premier League season since Birmingham in 2009-10, with Nuno Espirito Santo hailing his side's showing in a first win since they lost the FA Cup semi-final to Watford.

"Playing against any team is difficult, but Arsenal have quality players, it requires a lot of organisation, running, covering to allow us to have the ball and create something," Nuno told reporters. "First of all, you have to be organised.

"The movement off the ball is very important, knowing where to recover, where to go out to create problems and we did really good in the first half, not so good in the second, we had situations four versus two where we have to decide better, but it's about the organisation and shape of the team.

"I'm very proud of the way we work, the way the players engage themselves and commit themselves to an idea because we give everything that we have each game, it's a commitment to try to do everything you can to perform well. That's what makes me proud, the belief of us in ourselves.

"It was a good performance against a tough team. First half was very good, second half not so good, but very well played. If we look at all the game I think the boys worked very hard."