For one former Arsenal favourite, the difference was night and day. After watching the Aston Villa duo torn limb from limb by Brentford eight days earlier, Perry Groves was certainly hoping that history would repeat itself when Unai Emery made his return to the Emirates Stadium.
Unfortunately for him, and for Arsenal’s Premier League title hopes, Mikel Arteta’s misfiring Gunners would not get quite so much joy out of an Aston Villa backline which came in for so much criticism the weekend previously.
Pau Torres and Diego Carlos struggled badly up against the movement and pace of Bryan Mbeumo and Yoann Wissa, Brentford battling back from 2-0 down to lead 3-2 albeit briefly – during that six-goal thriller at Villa Park.
Kai Havertz, Gabriel Jesus and Leandro Trossard, in contrast, were kept on a very tight leash by a Villa defence which looked a lot more comfortable sitting a little deeper and hitting their hosts on the break.
Aston Villa stun Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium
“(The Villa backline) dropped off,” Groves, a two-time First Division champion with Arsenal in 1989 and 1991, tells talkSPORT (15 April, 1pm). “I saw Carlos and Torres get the runaround by Brentord. It was like chasing ferrets!
“Yesterday, they were so disciplined and so tight defensively. It was a tactical masterclass by Unai emery. Somtimes, you have to doff your cap and say he got it right and Arteta got it wrong.”
Emery has enjoyed a lot of success of late with the sort of high defensive line that would give most managers nosebleeds. But, ever adaptable, the Spaniard out-manoeuvred the man who replaced him in the Emirates dugout back in 2019 by instructing his team to sit a few yards further back while using the speed of thought of Youri Tielemans and the speed of foot of Ollie Watkins to catch Arsenal out at the other end of the pitch.
“He’s been immense,” was Gary Neville’s assessment of Carlos, the £26 million signing from Sevilla showing why he was seen as one of Europe’s premiere centre-halves during his time in La Liga (Sky Sports).
“Diego Carlos, outstanding in that first half. He was a man mountain.”
Champions League qualification close
Aston Villa’s win – doing the double over Arsenal for only the third time in their history – means Champions League qualification is theirs to lose with only a few weeks of the season remaining. The Midland giants scored twice in the space of just three minutes in the dying stages, Leon Bailey opening the scoring before Watkins kept his Golden Boot hopes alive with a dramatic clincher late on.
“We were struggling to bring the ball and do what we did in the first half. We lacked a lot of composure, we rushed things with the ball, we never had enough sequences in areas that we wanted like we did in the first half,” Arteta sighed at full-time.
“Credit to them as well. We lacked a lot in the second half and the game became more stretched, and more even without a lot of things happening really. Obviously, when we conceded the goals that was a big blow. And the second one even bigger in the manner in which it happened.
“When you lose, you have to recognise the quality of the opponent and move forward.”