NO NAPPING

Emery warns his side to be brave as they expect a ferocious night in Naples

UNAI EMERY fears Arsenal are in for one of the longest nights of their lives against Napoli – and has warned his side to be brave.

He expects an explosive atmosphere in front of a ferocious 60,000 crowd at the Stadio San Paolo (where the Londoners’ striker Alexandre Lacazette and his team-mates trained yesterday, right), which is built on volcanic rock.

But Emery believes his team can protect a 2-0 first-leg lead and march on to the semi-finals. “We must play with courage and intelligence,” said the Gunners boss. “We know 90 minutes here can be long. But we want to play without thinking about the first leg. We know it’s going to be a different match.

“We are waiting for their best performance, their best capacity here with their fans, in their stadium, with the atmosphere.

“We want to play thinking to win, to score, to push, to stop them, thinking also tactically to be together, and when we have the chance to attack the space. They have a lot of players with a big quality to push against us and give us a lot of problems, but we also have the players to fight against them with our quality.” Napoli, UEFA Cup winners back in the Diego Maradona era in 1989, are unbeaten at home in Europe this season. They have won four games and drawn the other, scoring 10 goals and conceding only two, and beat Liverpool on home turf in the Champions League. They exited that competition as the best third-placed team of the group stage, and in seven games against Premier League sides in Naples they have won five.

By contrast, Arsenal have collapsed repeatedly on the road this season and have lost both of their away games in the knockout stages so far, to Rennes and BATE Borisov.

Defender Sokratis knows all about the reputation of Napoli’s fearsome fanbase from a four-year spell playing in Italy for Genoa and AC Milan.

But the Greece star, who is back after serving a ban in Monday night’s win at Watford, insists the Gunners have what it takes to cope.

He said: “We will have to be focused for 95 minutes and the atmosphere will be very good.

“Can we match them for courage? I don’t know, but I know my team. We play very good football. Every game we fight. For us this is one more final. We will be ready.” TEAMS NAPOLI: Meret, Hysaj, Koulibaly, Maksimovic, Rui, Callejon, Allan, Zielinski, Ruiz, Milik, Insigne ARSENAL: Cech, Sokratis, Koscielny, Monreal, Maitland-niles, Torreira, Xhaka, Kolasinac, Ramsey, Iwobi, Lacazette