Gunners boss suffers debut defeat against Premier League champions
Sunday 12 August 2018 20:54, UK
Unai Emery acknowledged that plenty of work lies ahead of his Arsenal side after losing to Manchester City in his first game in charge of the club.
For the first time in 22 years, the Gunners started a new campaign with Arsene Wenger not at the helm as the new Emery era at the Emirates got underway.
But champions City dashed the Spaniard's hopes of a dream debut as goals in either half from Raheem Sterling and Bernardo Silva saw them kick-off their title defence with a 2-0 victory.
Reflecting on his first competitive game at Arsenal, Emery told Sky Sports: "Manchester City's performance showed us that we need to continue the process of improving. They deserved the result.
"We are a new team [that needs] to improve. For me today, I was frustrated that we lost but it is also one more experience and continued progression.
"I saw things in our performance we can improve and the first match against Man City is good, but it may be more difficult than our season will be this year.
"In the first half, we weren't as good as City and 1-0, for us, means we had to try and change in the second half.
"We needed to believe more in the moment, try to do more aggressive pressing with the ball and break their defensive lines on the pitch going forward.
"In the second half the team got better in the match but going down 2-0 closed our options down in the game.
"[One positive] from the second half was the speed of our game, we had chances to make a better result."
Emery will try and secure the first points of his tenure when Arsenal travel to Stamford Bridge on Saturday for a London derby with Chelsea.
