I know it may sound contradictory, but Arsenal don’t need to risk it all today.
A lot of Gooners, I myself included, were left bemused at our lack of threat in our first UCL game of the new campaign against Atalanta in midweek. A game where we saw the return of the vicious circle of sideways passing, we thought has been dead and buried for a while now.
Our unwillingness to take risks in that game baffled me the most with us struggling to exploit their man to man press in a game where we were clear favorites, today however will be a very different scenario with us coming up against arguably the best football team in the world, and with that in mind then we shouldn’t take unnecessary risks that’ll see us lose today.
A lot of pressure has already been put on our shoulders to win heading into this encounter, with the game already being billed as a make or break to our chances of winning the league and we’re still only in September! However, this should not be the case because whether we win, lose or draw this match we’ll still have so much to play for in the 33 remaining games of the season, not to mention that we’ll still have a chance of rectifying any wrongs here in the reverse fixture later in the campaign. Furthermore, the key absentees we’ll be having for this game is another reason why we should not be risking it all for a win, we’ll be without our best creator so what are the odds of us scoring two goals if they score us one first? Slim in my opinion so therefore keeping it simple, especially in possession, will absolutely be key for us.
If we had lost or drawn the Spurs game this would have been a completely different story, but we didn’t, which is another reason why we must not take too many risks in today’s game. I know we’ll be tempted to prove Rodri wrong about our mentality, but staying levelheaded and realistic will help us even more than that. A point away to the City would be fantastic, they don’t drop too many of those at home, so we’ll be happy if we do get it.
Winning against our biggest title rival is not always a guarantee of title success at the end of the campaign, we taking four points off them last season and still falling short is a testament to that. However a win would do our chances a world of good even this early in the season but we should firstly do everything in our power to make sure we don’t lose this game first!
KENNETH BENJAMIN.
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