Unai Emery said he was “proud” of his Arsenal side despite passing up a golden opportunity to win the 185th north London derby at Wembley Stadium. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s injury-time penalty miss denied Arsenal all three points, but Emery refused to point fingers, even after a number of contentious refereeing decisions against his side.
Foremost among them was the decision to award Tottenham a penalty late in the game, despite Harry Kane being offside shortly before he was pushed over by Shkodran Mustafi. Emery welcomed the introduction of VAR in the Premier League from next season, but preferred to focus on his own side’s attacking output.
“We created so many chances and had the possibility to win,” Emery said. “Laca [Alexandre Lacazette] had two good chances. He didn’t score. OK, no problem. But this work we are doing before, this mentality, I don’t want frustration after one mistake or one action. I want to continue creating more, to find our attacking moment.
“I am proud of the players, of our week. Then you can win, you can lose, you can draw. But above all we played like a team, feeling together, pushing our different qualities, and the adaptation to the match was good.”
Emery also warned Lacazette and Aubameyang that he would continue to rotate them in and out of the side, whether they liked it or not. Lacazette looked visibly frustrated after being brought off shortly into the second half, and Emery said: “They need to accept the decision. Because I am finding the best decision for the team, and we are playing a lot of matches. For example, this match, it is not possible to play both.”
Mauricio Pochettino claimed - a little dubiously - that Tottenham had been the better team “in all aspects”, and suggested - equally dubiously - that the key moment of the game came when referee Anthony Taylor failed to show Granit Xhaka a red card for a foul on Harry Kane after 12 minutes. “Foul,” he insisted. “Yellow, amber or red. If the foul is for us, maybe we can score the goal. If it is a yellow card, the aggression of the player changes. If red, the game is different.
“I think we were better than Arsenal in all aspects. It was a fantastic game, so exciting, great atmosphere, two teams wanting to play and win the game. To concede after 15 minutes was tough for us. But of course I am so happy with the character, with the personality, the way that we played at the end. After two defeats it was important today again to build our positive run.”
