After Arsenal’s excellent unbeaten run of 22 games, including a draw against Liverpool and the great win over Tottenham, everyone thought Arsenal were back in the game and ready to challenge for a Top Four place. But our recent form has gone completely downhill and our makeshift defence has been awful, although it wasn’t that good before as evidenced by only having two clean sheets in the first half of the season.
But now we have to face Liverpool up at Anfield, and Jurgen Klopp’s team has gone from strength to strength and are amazingly still unbeaten so far in the League. We should be worried, and the Arsenal legend Emmanuel Petit seems certain that his old team is going to be taken apart by Liverpool tomorrow. ‘In defence they are weak, they’re average,” Petit said in the Mirror. “They make individual and collective errors. Sometimes you have to laugh. Their injuries are not an excuse, most of the players who stepped in are internationals.”
‘The quality they had been showing vanished (at Brighton) and it became obvious what their weakest link was – the defence. ‘I don’t know what’s going on with some of these players. During the long unbeaten run you thought Arsenal are back on track.
‘They need to raise their game mentally on Saturday. I’ve seen glimpses of improvement compared to previous years but you can’t perform for just half an hour against Liverpool. You need to be fully switched on for 90 minutes, especially away from home.
‘If Arsenal go to Anfield thinking they can just keep plodding away the way they have been, it’s over – they’ll leave the stadium with three or four goals against them.’
That doesn’t sound very promising, but if I remember rightly, it was predicted that Liverpool would destroy us at the Emirates (Hi Mr Merson!) but they were proved wrong. The Gunners raised their game and managed to come back and get a draw, and Merson had to apolgise afterwards.
Let’s hope that Petit is also proved wrong tomorrow!
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