EPL: Emery Explains Why Arsenal Drew With Crystal Palace

Arsenal coach Unai Emery has blamed the team’s inability to take possession for the 2-2 draw at home to Crystal Palace in a Premier League encounter.

Naijaparry understands that the Gunners were 2-0 up courtesy of strikes from Sokratis in the 7th minute and David Luiz just a minute later.

But Palace were awarded a penalty in the 32nd minute after the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) overruled a booking on Wilfried Zaha for diving in the box.

Luka Milivojevic cooly slotted home the spot-kick to make it 2-1 before a Jordan Ayew goal in the 52nd minute pegged Arsenal back.

The Gunner rallied to find the winner and seemed to have made headway when Sokratis lashed home a loose ball in the 85th minute.

However, VAR ruled off the goal for a foul by Callum Chambers on a Palace player.

While speaking after the match, Emery said his team lost much possession of the ball and could have done better after going 2-0 up.

“We can speak about our performance and the VAR decision,” he said. We started very well and then conceded many chances so we should have controlled possession better to get more chances at 2-0 but usually, the opposite team want to push more and then they scored.

“We need to respect the decision, which was amazing, Last match here against Bournemouth, they didn’t check for a clear penalty on Pepe and at Sheffield on Sokratis.”

Furthermore, he said, “I think VAR is very important for the referees because their mistakes are very important.

“When it’s used in the right way but now we haven’t checked a lot of things to not change the pace of the match.

“Pepe and Soktratis’ penalties were very clear but they didn’t check. Maybe they are starting to check more after this week.”

And on Arsenal’s disallowed goal, he admitted that “A lot goes on in the penalty box, I’ve seen it now and understand why it was disallowed.

“But the second goal had a clear push-on James McArthur too.”