Can Arsenal Overcome their Defensive Weaknesses to Secure a Win?
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:03 They now go back to England.
00:05 The Gunners are down one, nothing.
00:08 And what some people may say is a bit of a surprise.
00:11 So Arsenal not only has to win,
00:13 but they need to win by multiple goals to get it done.
00:17 Do you think they can?
00:19 - Yeah, I definitely do think they can.
00:22 I think that sort of our mental processing of Arsenal
00:27 recalls a lot of teams from the end of the Arsene Wenger era
00:31 where they just were, they played,
00:33 they were a bit too delicate.
00:34 I mean, that really is the best way to say it.
00:36 They were not defensively strong enough.
00:38 Those teams were never challenging for the title.
00:41 And I suppose, to be fair, the same has sort of been true
00:45 of the Mikel Arteta Arsenal team,
00:47 where they really could have won the league last year
00:50 and they just ended up coughing it up
00:52 at the end of the season.
00:53 Just some bad results, you know,
00:55 losing to guys that were in,
00:56 losing to teams that were in the bottom half of the table.
00:59 My opinion would be that this version of the team
01:03 is pretty significantly better for two reasons.
01:06 The first being the presence of Declan Rice in the team.
01:10 He really solved kind of everything
01:13 that they needed to solve it.
01:14 In one move, he added them a real leader in the midfield.
01:19 They just needed some size.
01:20 They needed some solidity.
01:21 A lot of the guys that they were playing
01:23 in the midfield last year were smaller,
01:25 you know, five, six, five, seven, five, eight.
01:27 And just not that kind of rough and tumble
01:30 man of the field, boss of the field type thing
01:33 that Declan Rice did.
01:34 And the other is that Bukai Saka
01:37 is getting to almost peak soccer age here.
01:40 He is about to turn 23 years old.
01:43 He has 21 goals and assists this year.
01:46 He is one of the best in the entire Premier League
01:49 in terms of converting shots to goals.
01:52 He is not very wasteful.
01:55 Now, Gabrielle Martinelli, Kai Havertz, Martin Odegaard,
01:59 I mean, I think you can go in and out on those guys.
02:01 Saka is the one I know will show up any given time.
02:05 I think they probably get two or three goals here.
02:08 In fact, I bet they get one early in this matchup
02:11 where I would be very concerned for Arsenal
02:13 would be Bayern Munich away, Barcelona away,
02:18 Real Madrid away, Manchester City away.
02:20 I just, I don't know if I would have as much faith
02:22 in them getting, in fact, I would not have them,
02:26 you know, doing as well in those spots.
02:29 (upbeat music)
02:31 (bells chiming)