Unai Emery has revealed that Manchester United are the best team in England following his side’s impressive Premier League win over the Old Trafford side last weekend. Emery has also said that the performance of Arsenal goalkeeper Bernd Leno made him ‘proud’ during the 2-0 win over Manchester United. The Germany international started the season behind Petr Cech in the pecking order following his £19million move from Bayer Leverkusen. Leno has taken time to adjust to the physical demands of the Premier League and struggled to keep clean sheets behind a notoriously unstable and error-prone defence.
The 27-year-old, however, gave his most accomplished display in an Arsenal shirt to date during the victory which significantly enhanced Arsenal’s hopes of qualifying for next season’s Champions League. Leno made several brave and athletic stops, from Romelu Lukaku in particular, and Emery was delighted with his No.1’s contribution.
He said: ‘I’m very proud of our players. They gave all they could against the best team at this moment. We were playing very competitive for 90 minutes and I think we deserved this victory. We can be happy today. We knew Manchester United could use different tactics but we wanted to impose our gameplan and I think we did that. Our goalkeeper is very important and sometimes the goalkeeper can save us and today I’m very proud of his work.’
Meanwhile, United States youth international Gedion Zelalem is set to depart Arsenal for Sporting Kansas City, according to the Washington Post. A deal for the youngster has been struck between the two clubs and Zelalem will arrive in Kansas City on Sunday. Zelalem’s promising career has been derailed by injury and the 22-year-old has spent the season with Arsenal’s Under-23 squad thus far.
Zelalem is under contract at Premier League power Arsenal, and has been playing in the reserves of late. The highly-touted prospect pledged his future to the USMNT officially back in 2015, but injuries have cut down his progress, with his first team action in recent years on the club level coming from loan stints at Scottish club Rangers when they were in the second division, and Dutch second-division club VVV Venlo. He won the league title at both clubs. On the international front, he has yet to make his debut for the senior USMNT.