Defender Emerson is hoping West Ham United can use the memory of last season’s away win at Emirates Stadium to help inspire them to another strong performance on the road against London rivals Arsenal.
The Hammers are set to make the short journey to the north of the capital this Saturday afternoon, looking to bounce back from a run of two successive defeats, and kickstart a positive finish to the 2024/25 campaign.
Though a trip to the title-challenging Gunners - who currently sit second in the table, eight points behind leaders Liverpool - may look unenviable on paper, Italy international Emerson is taking plenty of heart from the 2-0 triumph earned by him and his teammates on their last such visit across the capital, in late December 2023.
The 30-year-old completed the full 90 minutes of that unforgettable contest - that saw Tomáš Souček and Dinos Mavropanos strike the decisive blows under the lights - and having also notched an incredible free-kick goal against Arsenal himself in the teams’ latest meeting in November 2024, he is itching to make more memories and come out of another mouth-watering clash on top.
“Of course, we respect Arsenal a lot,” Emerson said. “They are a very good team, and the table shows that, but at the end of the day, it’s eleven against eleven, and we’ll be going out there to get the right result.
“Last season, we got a big win there. It’s never easy to play at the Emirates, but we’ve shown we can go there and do very well, and we need to believe we can do it again. We’ve been working hard in training, and I’m confident we’ve got the positive mentality needed to come away with the win.
“We know our strengths and qualities, and we need the points. We’ll do our best to defend as well as we can, and then with the ball we’ll be looking to play football and score goals. We need to play with confidence, and look to win the game.”
West Ham go into the contest sat 16th in the Premier League standings, and having claimed just one win in five outings in the competition since the appointment of Head Coach Graham Potter in January.
Performances over the last six weeks have been littered with flashes of quality though, and Emerson is buoyed by the positive feeling within the camp, and believes there aren’t any limits on what the team can achieve under the tutelage of the new boss.
He added: “We need to look up the table. We know about our qualities, and there are still a lot of games to play, so we’re confident about what we can still achieve before the end of the season.
“Who knows what we can go on to do in the future. We are where we are because we haven’t been good enough up to now, but there’s a lot of positivity within the group, and we can’t wait to get out there again on Saturday.”
