Emery impressed by Arsenal’s staying power

LONDON: Unai Emery praised Arsenal’s intensity after they leapfrogged Manchester United to move into the Premier League’s top four with a 2-0 win over Southampton on Sunday.

Emery’s much-changed team were on cruise control at the Emirates Stadium thanks to early goals by Alexandre Lacazette and Henrikh Mkhitaryan.

And now the Arsenal manager hopes his players can maintain that intensity as a congested fixture list forces him into further squad rotation.

Emery made five changes to the starting line-up that beat Bate Borisov 3-0 in the Europa League on Thursday and he expects to make more for tomorrow’s home league game against Bournemouth.

“This is the moment we can use fresh players with energy and quality,” Emery said. “We need to mix to save players because we are going to play a lot of matches.

“It’s important to give good performances like today’s even when we have to change some players in the first eleven.

“On Thursday I was very proud of them in a dangerous match and today we decided to make some changes and it is very important that we carried on our intensity and our performance with different players.”

There was some risk in that approach. Although in the bottom three, Southampton had lost only one of their previous six league matches.

Southampton had also been the team that ended Arsenal’s 22-game unbeaten run with a 3-2 victory at St Mary’s in December — which Emery admitted had provided extra motivation for his players.

But while Saints were lively going forward, some of their defenders looked as if they were still on the beach in Tenerife, where they had spent a week of warmweather training.

“We had the first big chance, a very big chance and from the counterattack we went 1-0 down,” Southampton manager Ralf Hasenhuttl said.

“That was the worst thing that could happen. The second goal was a horrible mistake in a zone where you can’t make mistakes.”