Unai Emery Laments Missed Opportunity to Keep Pace With Top Four After Arsenal Defeat to West Ham

​Unai Emery conceded that his side suffered a ‘bad’ result as Arsenal slipped to a 1-0 defeat away to West Ham in the Premier League on Saturday.

Defeat at the London Stadium meant that Arsenal have now gone five away games in the league without a win, having lost three of those matches. Saturday’s defeat was the latest setback to the Gunners’ hopes of making up ground on the top four.

Declan Rice’s second half strike was enough to seal a stunning win for the home side, and Emery admitted after the match, as quoted by ​Arsenal’s ​official website: “I think the result is a bad one.

“We lost a great opportunity to take three points and get closer to ​Chelsea and the other top-four teams. But we lost. We wanted to do a better match but we couldn’t control the match like we wanted to.

“Looking at the chances in the 90 minutes for them and us, I think maybe the result is not what we deserved. In the gameplan, in the control, we need to improve our ideas. We could not do that.

“We didn’t concede a lot of chances but we conceded metres on the pitch and these metres gave them a lot of corners. From one corner, they scored, and then the match changed.

“We needed to attack more and better but today, defensively we needed to work well. We created chances but it wasn’t enough to win.

“Maybe in the first 20 minutes when we created some chances, that was the moment where we thought we could win the match, but then after it was difficult because we didn’t impose all the things we wanted.”

Emery’s side must move on quickly from suffering defeat to ​West Ham on Saturday, as Arsenal host Chelsea in a huge Premier League clash in the race for the top four next weekend.