Unai Emery believes a top-three Premier League finish is beyond Arsenal and has said his club are outsiders in the fight for fourth place with Chelsea and Manchester United.
Emery was charged with returning Arsenal to the Champions League when appointed last May and reacquainting them with the financial clout of Europe’s elite competition. According to the most recent accounts, the club’s revenues fell by £29.9m last season because of their participation in the Europa League.
But after a damaging sequence of away results, in which Emery’s team have taken two points from an available 18, they are three points behind Chelsea in fourth and one short of United in fifth. The gap to third-placed Tottenham is 10 points. Arsenal will qualify for the Champions League if they win the Europa League; they face Bate Borisov in the last 32, with the first leg on Thursday in Belarus.
“It is so far,” Emery said, when asked whether the Premier League’s top three were out of reach. “We are going to play at Tottenham in one month [on 2 March] but now we need to think about the next games and the next teams ahead of us, who are Chelsea and Manchester United.
“Are we outsiders for fourth place? Now, yes. Because we are sixth. It’s practical but it is like that. I trust in our capacity to take [fourth] but it is like that. There are teams now that are better than us and who have an advantage to us.
“Liverpool, Manchester City, Tottenham also – there is a big difference between us and them. Chelsea and Manchester United, two very big teams, also have a difference [to the top three] but they are closer than us. We need to continue thinking to be in the top four but knowing it’s difficult. It’s not to think we’re playing under pressure – it’s to be demanding and with the ambition to be in the top four [while] also knowing other teams have an advantage to us.”
Emery, who takes his team to Huddersfield on Saturday, discussed the emergence of the summer signing Mattéo Guendouzi and suggested that the midfielder’s decision to miss the European Under-19 Championship with France last July was pivotal.
“The first impression from him is very good and we saw this from the first weeks of pre-season when he arrived here,” Emery said. “He made the very big decision not to play with the national team in the summer because he wanted to work with us and show his capacity in pre-season. His adaptation was very quick and his progress is very good.”