Following the Manchester United way may aid us in beating Man-City by Lagos Gooner
Happy new week everybody. Hope we enjoyed the weekend Premiership games? Apart from the Arsenal versus West Ham game, I also watched the Manchester derby live! I watched it because I wanted to see what special thing Manchester United will do to win the game. Somehow, I knew Manchester United was going to win based on their impressive records against the big teams this season, I just didn’t how they were going to do it; therefore, I had to watch the game live.
So, what did Manchester United do to beat Manchester City? These are the three things I observed about their game against the Citizens.
Manchester United began the game on the attack: Let us face it, Man City are used to bullying teams from the first minute of a game but against Manchester United, they didn’t have it easy for the first 20 minutes or so. The Red Devils came to that game with one intention; and that is to score an early goal, which they did. If Arsenal wants to take away a point or three points from this match, they should make sure they put the Citizens under pressure. When you put them under pressure, they would find it difficult playing their game as they will be faced with the only option of defending right from the first minute. Man City would also be under so much pressure and it may cost them to lose balls in sensitive areas.
Manchester United caused troubles with their set pieces: Who noticed that whenever United had a free kick close to the penalty box or whenever they played a corner kick, they always troubled the Man City’s defence? Yes, big teams rely on set pieces these days to score goals. My darling Arsenal does not have a good free kick specialist who can score from free kicks. Apart from not having a free kick specialist, Arsenal does not have an effective way of playing and scoring from an indirect free kick. Manchester United’s first goal came from an indirect free kick! We should really be working on our set piece delivering, as we hardly score goals from free kicks.
Manchester United did not give the Citizens breathing space: it was obvious Ole knew that if he allowed Man City hold possession of the ball for too long, they would cause damage with it. Whenever United lost the ball, they did everything possible to win it back. They man marked the Citizens and this caused them into making silly mistakes like the one that gave the Red Devil’s their second goal. If Arsenal can also man mark Man City, I can say we will score goals.
All right fellas; these are what I feel we should do against Man City to achieve a good result.
What do you guys think? We are Arsenal and we are proud.
Sylvester Kwentua