Unai Emery has claimed he waited to shake hands with Mikel Arteta after Aston Villa’s defeat to Arsenal on Tuesday, but the video footage tells a different story.
Mikel Arteta was left looking a bit lost in the immediate aftermath of Arsenal’s 4-1 win over Aston Villa on Tuesday, as he struggled to locate his opposite number Unai Emery.
Emery had disappeared down the tunnel before the two managers had their customary post-match handshake, and the Villa boss attempted to make excuses after the game.
“I was waiting for him, but he was with his coaches,” Emery claimed to Sky Sports. “Firstly [I] always go with the opponent coach. If he’s not doing the same rule, I can’t wait. But nothing happened.
“No [issue] for me, but I can’t wait, because it was cold.”
The problem is that the post-match footage shows that Emery didn’t even pause on his way off the pitch. The Villa coach does look over towards Arteta as he leaves, but he doesn’t spend one second waiting before heading down the tunnel.
Sky Sports’ footage shows the incident from Arteta’s point of view, with just six seconds between the referee’s whistle and Arteta walking over towards where he expected Emery to be.
Arsenal sporting director Andrea Berta can be seen in the tunnel signalling to Arteta, presumably letting him know that Emery has already left. But it happened so quickly that the Arsenal boss was left confused for a moment, ultimately shaking hands with the Villa assistants.
Emery shouldn’t have been surprised by the fact that Arteta took a few seconds to congratulate his own assistants before the handshake, as the Arsenal boss took roughly the same amount of time to commiserate with them before his handshake with Emery at Villa Park.
Funnily enough, Emery was happy to wait those seconds when his team had won. Not so happy when they’d been battered 4-1.