Mikel Arteta set out a clear defensive brief as Manchester City prepared to visit the Emirates. Faced with Erling Haaland\u2019s prolific threat, the Arsenal manager argued the most practical option is to deny the forward the service that creates his chances.<\/p>\n
Arteta fretted that the only realistic way to stop Manchester City\u2019s talisman is to block off the supply. \u201cThere are a lot of things that you have to get right,\u201d Arteta mused. \u201cHe\u2019s a player who doesn’t need much space, much time or situations to generate big chances, especially in and around the box. Sometimes, preventing the source is the best thing to do, and we have to do it again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pep Guardiola could scarcely be blamed for comparing his reliable finisher to the likes of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, a reminder of the scale of the task for Arsenal. The problem for the home side is that Haaland has received service from many different sources this season: his six goals for City have been assisted by half a dozen different players.<\/p>\n
The absence of Kevin De Bruyne removes one familiar supply line but provides no simple solution. There is no single player for Arsenal to mark out of the game, which increases the emphasis on team defending and control of the channels that feed the striker.<\/p>\n
Phil Foden underlined City\u2019s variety of creators on Thursday night. Phil Foden provided the artful dink for Haaland to loop his header over Napoli\u2019s Vanja Milinkovi\u0107-Savi\u0107 on Thursday night. The England international has enjoyed a resurgence and represents one of the creative outlets Arteta will want to silence.<\/p>\n
In short, Arsenal\u2019s plan is pragmatic: stop the rhythm that reaches Haaland rather than attempting to shadow the striker alone. That approach, Arteta says, requires execution across the entire team if City\u2019s threat is to be contained.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arteta wants to block service to Haaland, whose six goals have been assisted by half a dozen players<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2915,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,238,969],"tags":[1047,1019,1048],"class_list":["post-2916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-manchester-city","category-premier-league","tag-champions-league","tag-creative-players","tag-haaland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2916","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=2916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}