Unai Emery has admitted his surprise that Tottenham parted company with Mauricio Pochettino this week.
The Argentinian was sacked by Spurs on Tuesday night and almost immediately replaced by Jose Mourinho.
Emery only came up against Pochettino on four occasions, with Arsenal not losing to their north London rivals in any of those games under the Spaniard.
And Emery risked the wrath of Arsenal fans by heaping praise on his former north London opponent.
Speaking during his pre-Southampton press conference, Emery said: "It's a surprise how it finished, that relationship with Pochettino. I don't know why and I don't know how he's [Mourinho] going to change their performance.
"The last result is maybe most important than the career. Tottenham were doing very good work with Pochettino. Maybe the last results, matches they didn't achieve good results, but overall their way in the last years with Pochettino was perfect.
"For me it was a surprise."
Emery was asked about Mourinho's potential impact at Tottenham, and preferred to bring the conversation back round to Pochettino.
He added: "He's a very good coach, his career is very strong with the title experience, but also Pochettino's work in Tottenham was amazing.
"Now they decided to change, I don't know exactly why they decided to do that.
"They have their way, we have our way and when we battle in our moment we will look at how we are, them and us.
"At the moment we are different in the table and we want to keep that distance."
