Arsenal players must adapt to Unai Emery style and accept painful results, says Gary Neville

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Alex Young @alexwsyoung21 August 2018

Gary Neville expects Arsenal to suffer under Unai Emery but told the new manager to ignore early criticism as his ideas are being implemented.

The Gunners have lost their opening two games of a league campaign for the first time since the first Premier League season in 1992, going down 2-0 to Manchester City and 3-2 to Chelsea.

Sam Allardyce criticised Emery's determination to play it out from the back, but Neville says Emery must stick to his guns or risk being looked at as weak by this squad.

"I think it's ignorant to suggest that he has to adapt," Neville said on Sky Sports' 'Monday Night Football'. "Unai Emery has been a coach for 10 years and has been successful.

"He has his idea [and] the players have to adapt to him. He must find out, over this first season, which players can adapt to him and which can't. I expect in this first season that there will be some pain for Arsenal in this transition.

"It is dangerous to adapt. The minute I started to adapt [at Valencia], and said to knock it long, the players threw away the previous work I had done. You start to get confusion into the players' minds.

"He is only five or six weeks in. I saw Sam Allardyce saying 'you can't do this, you can't do that. Unai Emery isn't trying to avoid relegation, he is trying to build a team to win a title, with a style.

"The last thing Emery should do it adapt, otherwise the players will walk all over him."

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