The team and tactics for Arsenal to beat Man City

Five ways for Arsenal to win by Twig

The victories of Man Utd and Southampton yesterday has made our clash with Man City even more crucial. The game is crucial for both teams. If Arsenal wins, City will be 5 points off the pace behind Chelsea and if City wins we’ll be behind Southampton by a huge 6 points. Many fans are a bit doubtful that we could win today’s fixture given our woeful away record against the big sides. But I think with a good selection, Arsenal can make life very difficult for Man City as we proved earlier in the season in the Community Shield.
So what are some things we could do to achieve victory today?

1) Do not concede early on
We’ve conceding too many early goals in our woeful away performances of recent. Usually, when we concede early, it’s not a good sign for the rest of the match. We conceded in the 1st minute away at Stoke and conceded in the 19th minute against Everton, only managing to equalize in the dying minutes. A good pressing game from kickoff will help us avoid an early goal.

2) Play Monreal
If Gibbs is fit, he’s likely to start ahead of Monreal. However, there’s a good reason why Monreal should start regardless. He has enjoyed a rich vein of form and has been one of our most dependable players this season, featuring in large spells as a centre back. In fact, a report by ESPN has it that Arsenal have a better win percentage and clean sheet record when Monreal starts than when he doesn’t. Furthermore, there’s less chance of having him mixed up with Oxlade-Chamberlain!

3) Take control of the midfield
One of the reasons for our impressive win against City in the Community Shield was that we took charge of the midfield, featuring Wilshere, Ramsey and Cazorla. This time around, Wilshere is injured and Ramsey is still not 100% match fit. However, we have the tireless Coquelin and the ageless Rosicky, who has put in a good showing in the last 2 games he has started. Unfortunately, the high pressing game we’ll need for today’s game, means Ozil and Ramsey should probably not start as both players are still not up to 100%…

4) Use the wings
City is going to hit us on the wings through Navas and Milner and we must give them a dose of their own medicine as well. In the Community Shield game, Sanchez was menacing down the right wing as the City fullback afforded him lots of space (or maybe they simply didn’t know how to deal with him). The good thing with City is that they give their opponents a chance to play and score as we saw in our entertaining 3-6 loss last season! (How many teams lose after scoring 3 goals?). Oxlade-Chamberlain has been terrific of recent and I am keen to watch his contest against the City fullbacks…

5) Bench Giroud!
Now, I’m not suggesting we benched Giroud because he has been useless, but simply because he has the strange habit of coming off the bench to score a goal. I don’t why this happens but it has happened too many times for it to be coincidental. It happened against Man United and it happened against Man City in the Community Shield. Funnily enough, both goals were stunners. Our opponents probably shouldn’t be happy to see Giroud on the bench – they should be scared!

I have only just got this post from Twig and as we now know not all of these have happened but hopefully Arsenal will prove him right on the other points and beat Man City.