Emery hints Leno may need patience after Cech display

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Unai Emery suggested Bernd Leno needs to stay patient after Petr Cech starred against Everton in a 2-0 Premier League win for his side.

With Everton on top during the first half, Cech saved twice from Richarlison and parried away a Lucas Digne free-kick to keep the Gunners level at Emirates Stadium.

Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang struck within three second-half minutes to record a fourth consecutive Premier League win.

Cech has drawn criticism for his apparent discomfort in playing the ball out from the back as Emery’s tactics demand, but his saves proved key on Sunday.

And Leno, who aired his frustration at a lack of opportunities after making his Arsenal debut in Thursday’s 4-2 Europa League win over Vorskla, could be kept on the sidelines.

“We are happy with the goalkeepers,” Emery told reporters after overseeing a fifth straight victory in all competitions. “Petr has big experience, big quality, He started the season very well.

“Today he showed us he is playing very well. He showed us that he’s very good and continuing to work hard with this spirit every day.

“Leno is calm and knows now that he’s working well, but also we have three goalkeepers and Petr Cech is delivering good performances. We are going to give them chances to play in other competitions, but we want the same performances like Petr’s. It’s good for the team, for the goalkeepers, to reward good performances.

“I’m a little surprised because there have been a lot of questions over Cech. In pre-season and also in the first matches with us, he’s played with good performances. Bernd Leno will also improve with us and learn about this competition here. For him, he’s also doing very well and benefiting from working every day with a goalkeeper like Petr Cech.

“He’s learning from him, giving him experience and he’s watching him in games. Leno is a younger goalkeeper and he is coming here with a big future, but now, it’s a very competitive position. Petr Cech is very important for us.”

“In 90 minutes there are moments for the opposition and moments for us,” the Spaniard added. “We need our goalkeeper to stop their attacking moments and our strikers to score in our attacking moments.

“We wanted to control the first half more because we didn’t have the ball like we wanted [and] conceded two or three important chances,

“But we spoke in the dressing room to stop their attacking moments with better positioning on the pitch and also individually about each other helping more in the second half.

“Three points were important for us in terms of the table. The victory was very important.”

Cech kept Arsenal in the game during the first half, with Marco Silva feeling a 2-0 reverse was an unjust scoreline given Everton’s performance and replays clearly showing Aubameyang was offside when he scored.

“It’s a disappointing result, it didn’t reflect what I saw on the pitch,” Silva told a news conference. “We didn’t deserve this result. We had four or five clear chances to score. But this is football.”

On Arsenal’s second goal, Silva added: “It’s really frustrating. At that moment we had just one player [Jonjoe Kenny] in the box, it was clear where he was and the second touch was clear. It was a clear offside.”