Arsenal manager, Unai Emery has brushed aside Watford captain, Deeney’s complaints after the striker was shown a red card for a off the ball elbow.
Speaking to the official site, the Arsenal manager, when asked about what was said to him by the Watford player said: “I don’t know. Only that. It’s not important. I didn’t listen to him really. I didn’t listen to him really and I only answered him to say I don’t know.”
He also said he didn’t see the red card, but believed the opponents playing with a man down helped his team.
” I didn’t see the red card. I leave the decision for the referee. It’s clear it helped us, with the decisions, because we played with one more player from then on. It’s more difficult for them. But our goal gave us the advantage in the first half and after the red card also. It helped us to take more control of the game, but we didn’t do all we wanted to do. But we can be happy with the result, because playing here is very difficult.”
He also explained his tactical decisions in the second half as Arsenal struggled to control the game after his substitutions.
“First I decided to do the change of Lucas Torreira because after the red card, the atmosphere is against him and also the doctor said to me in the first half that he has a little pain for Thursday and I decided okay, it’s the moment [to take him off].
“We played with the same system – 4-2-3-1 – with Xhaka and Aaron coming closer to Xhaka for the build-up and Mesut behind Auba as a midfielder. We didn’t control like I wanted to control the match.
“We are thinking and I was thinking to play with three centre backs to be enough for our build-up and use one player more in the middle, like Matteo as a possibility to help with Xhaka, help with Aaron and Mesut, to give the security in the midfield.
“But I didn’t do this decision on the pitch with all the control I wanted, so after I changed and recovered a 4-2-3-1 with Ainsley. Above all, also in our team, the second half they can take some moments and the possibility to score in set-pieces or a long ball and a second action.
“We worked very well on set-pieces and the long balls with second actions but the most important for us was to score the second goal to control the match.”
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