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<\/p>\nValencia made it to the semi-finals of the Europa League by beating LaLiga rivals Villarreal on Thursday.<\/p>\n
They now set up a clash with the Premier League giants.
\nToni Lato and Dani Parejo were on target for Los Che as they beat Villarreal 2-0 on Thursday night to secure a comfortable 5-1 aggregate success in the last eight.<\/p>\n
The Valencia boss had been less than impressed by his side\u2019s showing in the first leg, but was rewarded by a dominant display at Mestalla.<\/p>\n
They now face Arsenal who are led by three-time Europa League winner and former Valencia boss Unai Emery.<\/p>\n
However, Marcelino maintained that the Premier League side must be considered as the favourites.<\/p>\n
\u201cArsenal fight to get into the Champions League, with a coach who knows us perfectly, they are one of the favourites,\u201d Marcelino told a news conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut anything can happen in the semi-finals. At the same time, [the final in] Baku is a long way away.\u201d<\/p>\n
Valencia endured a difficult start to the campaign, but Marcelino\u2019s side sit just three points off the top four in LaLiga, with a Copa del Rey final against Barcelona to come.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are proud of the performances of the squad, we are in a semi-final and in a final, and we are one win away from fourth,\u201d Marcelino added.<\/p>\n
\u201cWinning in Seville [against Real Betis on Sunday] would put us in a very good situation.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Valencia manager, Marcelino has insisted the pressure will be on Arsenal when his side take on the Gunners in the Europa League semi-finals. Valencia made it to the semi-finals of the Europa League by beating LaLiga rivals Villarreal on Thursday. They now set up a clash with the Premier League giants. Toni Lato and Dani […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":108874,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[4427],"class_list":["post-108873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-arsenal"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=108873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/108874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=108873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=108873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=108873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}