Arsenal Cannot Afford To Lose To City – Match Preview

It’s been a tough week to be an Arsenal supporter and with Manchester City visiting The Emirates this evening things could get a lot worse. However, Arsenal put three goals past City in the 6-3 loss despite at least three major refereeing cock-ups so may feel they can get something out of this game. After promising so much and failing so spectacularly on three occasions this season you could be forgiven for thinking the Arsenal team won’t have the mental strength to bounce back against a rampant City.

Although, as detractors have found to their chagrin this season, Arsenal have a habit of bouncing back when no-one expects them to. This is Arsenal’s last chance to claw their way back into the title race and in a season of anything goes it’s worth a punt so pick a site to bet on your favourite sport and cross your fingers for Arsenal this evening.

It’s difficult to think of Arsenal as favourites for this game because despite their excellent form at the Emirates this season, Manuel Pellegrini seems to have fixed City’s early season away troubles. Not being favourites may work in Arsenal’s favour; the supporters don’t seem to expect Arsenal to get anything out of this game and maybe that will make the discontent less palpable.

With Everton supposedly hot on our heels, a win today would lift the fans in more ways than one. It would help keep the distance between us and the chasing pack, it would be a long-desired victory over a top team, it would raise spirits heading into the final run of games and buoy us for what should be a top-four clinching game at Goodison and our semi-final trip to Wembley.

A win would also put us firmly back in the title-race, albeit as a dark-horse, and as Wenger says, if Everton can catch us then we can catch the top three.

‘Everybody speaks about Everton coming back on us (and challenging for fourth place). Why should we then not come back on the teams who are in front of us? There’s still a lot of turning games that will happen until the end of the season. But it’s down to the quality of our performances. We don’t think about the title race now, we think about winning again. There is no other priority other than coming first, that is still our target.’

Wenger

We don’t have anyone returning from injury so the same team that drew at Swansea will probably start today and you would hope the midfield offers better support to Olivier Giroud. Giroud is often maligned for his performances in the big games and whilst I do not disagree that Giroud is a limited player and we require a different type of striker to push us on I am not so parochial to believe that Giroud is not good enough for Arsenal and we’ll never win anything with him in the squad.

Giroud is often left to fight entire defences on his own with no runners beyond him or support from the attacking midfielder closest to him. Cazorla has not reached the standards he set last season and looks completely unconvincing in Özil’s place – more on that another time – but if we are to win the game today Santi will need to dictate play better and get closer to Giroud.

Arsenal face off against Everton next weekend and cannot afford to go there knowing an Everton win could even the points up and potentially propel Everton above us. A win against City would take a little of the pressure off but at the very least Arsenal cannot afford to lose this match.

With that in mind I think it is going to be a conservative game with a scoring draw. 1-1.

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