Gabriel Jesus has offered a blunt assessment of Arsenal\u2019s chances this season, telling Rio Ferdinand he is fully behind the club\u2019s pursuit of silverware. Asked by Manchester United legend Rio Ferdinand about how he felt regarding Arsenal\u2019s title-winning chances, Jesus replied: \u201cVery confident, very confident.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are in a good place and we have an amazing squad. Not just the players who play most of the games but the whole squad. I believe 100% that this season we are doing something.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those words arrive as Arsenal sit top of the Premier League by nine points, with rivals Man City holding a game in hand. Mikel Arteta\u2019s side have also progressed to the Champions League quarterfinals and are set to reach the FA Cup semifinal should they beat Southampton on Saturday. The recent Wembley defeat to Man City was a reminder of the margin for error and of the club\u2019s hunger; Arsenal have not won a major trophy since the FA Cup in 2020.<\/p>\n
Jesus singled out Declan Rice as a driving force behind Arsenal\u2019s rise. \u201cHe\u2019s the type of player who can do everything. He can defend, he can create, he can shoot … he\u2019s an amazing player,\u201d enthused the Brazilian. He drew comparisons and highlighted Rice\u2019s distinctive role in the team. \u201cHe\u2019s different from Rodri because Declan is playing as a No. 8 now. I can compare him a little bit with Fernandinho. Fernandinho defended better than him I think but Declan gets forward, we call him \u2018The Horse\u2019 because when he gets going you can\u2019t stop him.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s amazing, really amazing. Look at his character as well, he was born to be a leader. I really appreciate him as a person and as a player.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jesus also paid tribute to Bukayo Saka, arguing the winger\u2019s talent places him in the same bracket as top Brazilian wide players such as Raphinha and Vinicius Junior, even if Saka\u2019s season has not matched his highest standards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jesus says ‘I believe 100%’ as Arsenal lead the league and chase trophies across three competitions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10648,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,172],"tags":[1558,826,1047],"class_list":["post-10649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-epl","tag-brazil","tag-bukayo-saka","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}