Arsenal will face Leicester City next in the Premier League and it will be one of the toughest games that Mikel Arteta’s side will play this season in their bid to end the campaign in a European place.
Brendan Rodgers’ juggernaut is one of the most in-form teams in the Premier League and they are even title challengers if Manchester City’s form drops off.
The Europa League campaigners have lost none of their last six matches in all competitions, four have been won.
One player that has been in the thick of things for them is Harvey Barnes and an analyst has tipped the 23-year-old Leicester City academy graduate to cause problems for the Gunners on Sunday.
He has scored in each of his last two Premier League matches against Liverpool and Aston Villa.
In his tactical analysis for the weekend game, Adrian Clarke highlights the attacker as one player that will cause all kinds of problems for Arsenal.
He writes on the Premier League website: “Leicester City’s Harvey Barnes is perhaps the most dangerous wide man in the Premier League.
“Since Boxing Day the 23-year-old has scored six goals and provided three assists in 11 top-flight outings.
“Barnes has consistently terrorised defences with his pace, skill and ability with both feet. The Academy graduate will now relish the opportunity to do the same to Arsenal on Sunday.
“Gunners manager Mikel Arteta will be well aware that if his side do not shackle Barnes properly, he is likely to hurt them.
“When space is left for Barnes to sprint into, he is a destructive player.
“He ran on to through-balls to clinically dispatch 1v1 finishes in home victories over Liverpool and Southampton.
“The England international also travels beautifully with the ball at his feet.
“He showcased that dribbling prowess by surging from the halfway line to score against Leeds United.”
Leicester’s elimination from the EL is both bad and good news for Arsenal. The bad news is that they will be desperate to win the league game now. The good news is that it means one danger to Arsenal in the EL has been eliminated. In fact the latest round of results sees many dangers eliminated including Lille Napoli Leverkusen Hoffenheim. Of the teams left Ajax Rangers Slavia Prague and Shakhtar will win their respective leagues while AC Milan Roma Man utd will likely qualify from their league. In short Arsenal and Tottenham are joint hot favourites to contest the final should they avoid each other in the draws.
Unfortunately, there’s no way that this Arsenal can beat that Leicester. At least not at this stage of the prem. Maybe if it were GW 30-38, we could hope to break them because most of their players could be overplayed.
We’ve seen that a lot of our players have a mistake in them and a team like Leicester will use them. And once they do, they’ll play 10-0-0 formation and Arteta’s men won’t be able to break them down.
Let’s not forget, Arsenal still can’t open up teams that play deep.
Leicester’s away form has been excellent this season and suits their counter attacking tactics were they release the likes of Vardy and the impressive Barnes.At home they have been relatively poor when faced with a packed defence.Whoever is played at RB , and Cedric is due a chance surely, should be detailed to man mark Barnes, and not to bomb forward at every opportunity.For some reason I have a good feeling about this game, and with Partey and hopefully Martinelli in the side I think we will win.
He will be marked by bellerin who runs away from challenge, I will rather see arteta start Cedric.