Football

Why Unai Emery did not bring on Alexandre Lacazette and Nicolas Pepe during Arsenal’s defeat to Eintracht Frankfurt


Alexandre Lacazette looks on from the bench during Arsenal’s Europa League defeat (Picture: Getty)

Unai Emery says injuries to other players prevented him from bringing on Arsenal forwards Alexandre Lacazette and Nicolas Pepe during the Europa League defeat to Eintracht Frankfurt.

Arsenal missed out on the chance to qualify for the Europa League knockout stages with a game to spare on Thursday evening as they were beaten 2-1 by Frankfurt at the Emirates.

New captain Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang gave the hosts the lead just before half-time but a second-half brace from Daichi Kamada ensured Frankfurt left north London with three points.

It was another painful night for under-fire manager Unai Emery (Picture: Getty)

Arsenal spent the last 30 minutes of the match desperately searching for an equaliser and Emery says injuries to David Luiz and Shkodran Mustafi stopped him from bringing on attacking duo Lacazette and Pepe.

Brazilian star Luiz, playing as a defensive midfielder, hobbled off after 31 minutes while Arsenal’s third and final sub saw Lucas Torreira replace Mustafi.

Asked why Lacazette and Pepe remained on the bench for the entire match, under-fire Gunners manager Emery said: ‘We had some injuries.

‘We needed to change David Luiz and then we had a problem with Mustafi. Two injuries meant we had to make those changes.’

On Arsenal’s performance, Emery added: ‘We lost here but for the Europa League, we have the last match to achieve that.

‘The first five or ten minutes of the second half were good but then we lost control for 15 minutes and we could not change the result.’

Reacting to Arsenal’s underwhelming performance, former Gunner John Hartson told BT Sport: ‘There was no urgency in the Arsenal performance.

‘Very lacklustre, it looked like they had no direction from the manager in terms of how they were going to play.

All in all, very disappointing and on the back of that performance – Unai Emery – they have to be starting to ask questions about his job now, they really have.’

MORE: Arsenal fans blast Granit Xhaka for laughing with Eintracht Frankfurt players after Europa League defeat

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