Morning all.
Today could be a long day as we wait for tonight’s Champions League semi-final first leg against PSG. It’s the first one since 2009, a long time to wait to put things right based on what happened that evening, but the excitement – and nervousness – is palpable.
In terms of team news, both Mikel Merino and Ben White were in training yesterday, and I’m going to assume that both of them are fit enough to play a part if necessary. I think the latter will start on the bench, but the former has an important role this evening due to the absence of Thomas Partey who is suspended after picking up a yellow card late in the win over Real Madrid.
Merino has done a very good job as a fill-in centre-forward, but tonight he’s going to be needed in his more natural midfield habitat. Declan Rice will play the deeper midfield role, and Merino will operate alongside captain Martin Odegaard ahead of him. I still expect to see him in and around the penalty area, and he’s played the Gabriel role from set-pieces of late so there’s attacking potential there, but he’ll start as part of the midfield trio.
That means Leandro Trossard up front, with Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli either side of him. The Belgian has been a bit hot and cold this season, but with three goals in his last two games, let’s hope he can continue that kind of goalscoring form later on. Our two wingers can certainly cause PSG problems but the individual match-ups are fascinating. Saka v Nuno Mendes is really interesting, because he’s a difference maker for us but tonight he’s up against a left-back who has been really impressive this season. I’m sure Saka will relish the battle, but so too will the Portuguese international.
On other side, Achraf Hakimi loves to get forward and produces plenty of assists (14 in all competitions this season, along with 6 goals), but isn’t always quickest to get back into position, so finding the balance on that left hand-side between Martinelli and Myles Lewis-Skelly is going to be very important. If we can get the ball wide quickly, there might be space to exploit but we have to be so mindful of Hakimi’s potency when he gets into in the opposition final thrid.
There is a lot of attacking quality in the PSG team, much like there was when we faced Real Madrid to be fair. With Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Ousmane Dembele, the technical excellence of Vitinha in midfield, there’s a big job for Arsenal to do this evening to keep them quiet. I know we’ve beaten them already this season, but I think they’re better now than they were back then. They’ve beaten two Premier League teams on the way to this point of the competition, and while you could probably say getting past Aston Villa is what you’d expect, they’ve also knocked Liverpool out. Across the two legs of that game they had a total of 46 shots and in the home leg they restricted the now Premier League champions to just 2 efforts on goal to their 27 (and yes, Liverpool nicked that game, but still).
So, I’m sure a manager like Mikel Arteta will have studied the opposition in a serious way, and when asked about how his side will approach this one, he said:
You’ve seen it first hand the way we approach the game against Real Madrid, the way we approach the game when we played PSG before, the way we approach every week. That’s not going to change, that’s who we are, it’s our biggest strength. The good thing as well about us is that we are able to adapt to very different contexts, and we have shown that again this season.
Because sometimes you don’t want to, but the teams are able to take you to a different game, and feeling comfortable playing that game, and overcoming that game with yourself in a position that you play more of the game that you want, is a big strength. I think this season again we have demonstrated that we have the capacity to do that.
This is, for many of the players out on that pitch tonight, the biggest game of their Arsenal careers so far. Hopefully there’s even bigger still to come this season, but that aspect of it is fascinating to me. There must be a sense within this group that they have missed out on success by small margins, and a huge determination to put it right. Winning the Champions League for the first time would make history, something Arteta referred to:
You feel it, especially because we have a lot of people who have worked in the club for many, many, many years and they’ve never been in this position. So that tells you how unique and beautiful it is. It’s the biggest competition for any European club. We’ve never done it, so we need to earn the right to be in that final and everything is going to start tomorrow.
And on the role of the fans, he’s calling for more of what we got against Real Madrid last time out:
I told them and I’m not exaggerating when I said bring your boots, bring your shorts, bring your t-shirts and let’s play every ball together. We want to do something special, that place has to be something special, something that we haven’t seen. I really hope that everybody who comes tomorrow to the Emirates and everybody watching and following us brings that energy with them.
We needed something special to lay the groundwork for the wins over Real Madrid. Declan Rice’s free kicks provided that, but let’s not forget those two wins were built on solid foundations of organisation and discipline. Tonight is the first of what’s likely to be a two-part job. We can put ourselves in a decent position for the trip to Paris, but we also have to be mindful that we don’t give ourselves a mountain to climb.
There’s the caution brought about by nerves, but by 8pm this evening those excitement levels will have risen too. Nobody can really predict what will happen. I think we’re capable of beating PSG, but I’m sure they’ll feel exactly the same way. Ultimately though, big European nights like this don’t come around that often – certainly not as often as they should for a club like Arsenal – so as the manager says let’s get everyone behind the team, enjoy it for what is is, and keep everything crossed we can produce like we did in the quarter-finals.
The players will be up for it 100%, and Arsenal fans should be too. It’s going to be a long, nervy day, but if that’s what we have to cope with to enjoy a great European night at home, then it’s a small price to pay. Fingers crossed.
Right, I’ll leave it there for now. We will have a bit of a preview podcast over on Patreon (combo with The 30) if you need something to listen to in a little while, and we’ll have live blog coverage, report, player ratings, goal clips, reaction and more on Arseblog News afterwards.
Come on you reds!
