Vitoria Guimaraes of Portugal midfielder, Mikel Ndubuisi Agu has been motivated to put up another brilliant outing against Arsenal on Wednesday in the UEFA Europa League, as his club’s coach, Ivo Vieira believes the team is good enough to beat the English Premier League side, megasportsarena.com reports.
Having starred for all 90 minutes in the first leg, away at Emirates Stadium, Agu will hope to get another slot with the hosts, and his aspirations have been boosted with daunting words from the coach, though the gaffer also admits he is expecting a tougher test when they host The Gunners.
Vitoria caused plenty of problems in London, scoring their first goals of the group stage and threatening to heap more pressure on under-fire Arsenal boss Unai Emery, as the Primeira Liga team twice took the lead at Emirates Stadium last month before a brace of Nicolas Pepe free-kicks ensured Arsenal kept their perfect start to Group F alive with a 3-2 win.
The performance will have given plenty of Portuguese supporters hope of a famous result at the Estadio D. Afonso Henriques – the stadium which hosted both of England’s Nations League finals matches in the summer.
The game kicks off at 15:50GMT with Vitoria unable to play on Thursday, same with their near-neighbours Sporting Braga and FC Porto, while a clash with Wednesday’s late kick-off in the UEFA Champions League fixtures also needs to be avoided.
Ahead of Wednesday’s reverse fixture, Agu’s coach warned anyone harbouring expectations of a similar game with the first leg that it will be more difficult this time around, but Vieira went on to declare that Guimaraes will enter their home fixture with only victory on their mind.
Vieira disclosed: “Our goal is to win. But my expectation is that this game will be more difficult for the zeal that was created and for the expectation that we could have won and it did not happen. That has to give us a lot of balance to not be ‘thirsty’ for the win and allow Arsenal in transition to make the game complicated for us.”
