EMERY: A CORNER OF MY HEART IS ALWAYS ARSENAL

AMONG the many nice things Unai Emery said about Arsenal on the eve of tonight’s Europa League semi-final first leg, he slipped in a home truth: ‘Neither us, nor them, have the league route to the Champions League open to us.’ It wasn’t a dig — in fact, when asked about his successor, he described Mikel Arteta and Arsenal as ‘the perfect marriage’. But it was a reminder that Arsenal are no closer to winning back their place in the top four since they cut short Emery’s 18-month spell in charge. He has moved on, but he will never stop believing that, given longer, he would have been successful at the Emirates. He hasn’t got Villarreal in the top four either but he has got them within 180 minutes of their first European final. That’s more than enough credit to take him into next season at a club where patience is not at such a premium. ‘The performance was good; the result was bad,’ he said of Villarreal’s 2-1 defeat to Barcelona at the weekend. They have fallen short against the biggest teams this season and drawn more games, 13, than anyone in the division. But there are plenty of signs of progress. Centre forward Gerard Moreno is having his best season ever and, with 20 goals, is the top Spanish scorer in La Liga. The 21-year-old winger Samu Chukwueze is fulfilling his potential, and centre back Pau Torres has played so well that Villarreal will do well to keep Real Madrid from signing him this summer. Emery’s pride also came through yesterday in the frequent mentions of Paris SaintGermain, Sevilla and Valencia. Why would there be emotional scars after Arsenal if he had already left big European clubs such as those three? ‘There’s a corner of my heart reserved for all of my ex-clubs,’ he said. He will also have been tempted to answer yesterday’s questions in English, just to remind us how he learned the language. In an interview with Sportsmail a year ago, with the wounds still fresh from his sacking, he said he felt that he hadn’t always been cut the slack he deserved. ‘When I said “good ebening” instead of “good evening” after a good result it was just a joke, when we were losing it was a disgrace,’ he said. Emery (left) is quirky. He was teased earlier in the season for struggling with the pronunciation of Chukwueze. He has also been targeted by the nation’s top sports impersonator Raul Perez, who brilliantly mimics his traffic-cop gesticulations from the technical area. But as Arteta was at pains to point out yesterday, he has a big heart, too. ‘I know a lot of people who work with him and they all say the same thing which is that he’s a fantastic man, a great manager but they highlight the man behind it is as well,’ said Arteta, who revealed that when he took over at Arsenal in 2019, he received a call from the man he had replaced. Emery said that chat was as much about offering his house in Barnet as anything else, but you can imagine the subject of accommodation soon being replaced by formations and tactics. Emery is as intense as ever. Arriving at training yesterday he spotted a player also in early for an interview and had a oneto-one session with him to the point that the interview was put back. For all that he has played it down in recent days, there is no doubting how much he wants to win this game. ‘It’s true I know some of their players,’ he said yesterday. ‘But I have to translate that knowledge to my own players.’ He will have left no stone unturned in trying to do exactly that ahead of tonight’s game.