Arsenal have finally beaten Unai Emery’s Aston Villa at the Emirates Stadium.
The Spaniard, who used to be the Gunners’ boss, has had an incredible record in the red side of North London. He had never lost a game there as an opposition manager.
Mikel Arteta brought an end to that with a very impressive 4-0 win on Tuesday night, but there was a sense of deja vu in the first half of the game.
That’s because Emery made Aston Villa do what they always do when they face Arsenal – waste time.
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Gabriel Jesus says ‘everyone could see’ that Aston Villa were wasting time vs Arsenal
Emery’s game plan against Arsenal in the Premier League is almost always the same.
The Spaniard makes his team slow the pace of the game down, asks them to break play up constantly and then hits the Gunners on the counter-attack.
To be fair to Emery, that has worked multiple times, and it did cause Arsenal a few problems in the first half of the game on Tuesday night.
Villa slowed the game down so much that, according to Opta, the ball was in play for just 24 minutes in the first half. Yet, the referee added only three minutes of stoppage time.
Speaking after the game, Gabriel Jesus and Gabriel Magalhaes both made sure to highlight Villa’s time-wasting tactics.
Jesus said on Sky Sports: “It was amazing. It’s always hard to play against them. They have brilliant players, they come here all the time, and they hurt us.
“And obviously, it was clear that at the beginning of the game, they tried to delay the game. Everyone could see that. But the mentality of this team is something that has really, really grown. Each game, it is growing even more. I think we won today because of the mentality.”
Gabriel added: “It’s very difficult to play against them – they tried to delay the game, but in the second half we kept going, and we were amazing after the first goal.”
Be honest. What was your immediate reaction to seeing Unai Emery snub a handshake with Mikel Arteta?
Emiliano Martinez’s time-wasting backfired
Emiliano Martinez is arguably the master of wasting time and frustrating the opposition.
It was so annoying to see the Argentine take his own sweet time over goal kicks, and for whatever reason, the referee didn’t ask to speed things up once.
It was all going to plan for Emery and his goalkeeper, but everything changed after Gabriel scored to give Arsenal the lead.
From that point, Martinez was doing everything he could to get the ball back quickly. He was even seen asking the ball boys to hurry up.
For Arsenal fans, it was great to see Martinez’s plan backfire, and they made their feelings about him perfectly clear during and after the game.
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