Emery reveals why he had to take in-form Ceballos off at Watford

Unai Emery has revealed why he took Dani Ceballos off in the draw at Watford despite the Spaniard being one of Arsenal’s better players on the day.

The Gunners threw away a two-goal lead at Vicarage Road on Sunday and were lucky in the end not to lose as the hosts piled up an incredible 31 shots as they dominated the second-half.

Ceballos, however, was one of the few bright spots, completing more passes than any other player, before he was hauled off to be replaced by Joe Willock on the hour mark.

That decision led to many Gunners fans criticising Emery, although the Arsenal boss defended his decision after the game.

Although Arsenal were never really in control of the match even when leading, many fans were critical of the decision to take off the composed Ceballos, but Emery has defended the move.

“It was very, very hot. We needed in the second half, some fresh players.

“We were struggling second half and I was thinking how we can improve with three players, fresh players, for give us more energy and give us also more capacity to be strong physically and tactically and also technically.”

Willock, Reiss Nelson and Lucas Torreira all came on but struggled to have any impact on the game, with skipper Granit Xhaka admitting afterwards that his teammates looked ‘scared’ in the second half.

When asked about his captain’s remarks, Emery added: “Maybe it’s a very individual feeling. I think in football you never need to have scared, you need to take that moment as an experience for you and for us.

“But really I can feel the players, I can feel me the same, sometimes when we were struggling, the possibility to don’t achieve our good consequence with our game plan.

“But we need to be strong in our mentality, but not for the players, for us, and to create our way, working and improving the things like today that happened in the second half.”

Read more: Arsenal are reportedly leading the race to sign highly-rated 15-year-old Logan Pye from Sunderland.

 

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