With 22 goals to his name already this season, it’s no surprise that Arsene Wenger has picked out Robert Lewandowski as Bayern Munich’s danger man.
The Polish international is in the best form of his life, and he’ll be out to continue that against the Gunners tomorrow night.
Asked about how his side might deal with him, the Arsenal manager suggested – reasonably enough – not letting him have the ball is a good option.
“First of all the best way to combat him is for us to have the ball,” he said.
“After that you have to be shrewd with him because inside the box he is outstanding, because of his technique, his finishing, his movement inside the box.
“That’s where we need the experience of Mertesacker and Koscielny to deal with that because that will be one of the important things on the night.”
And after two disappointing nights in Europe so far, Wenger is looking for his side to get something from a game against a side that have won 12 games in a row heading into this fixture.
“I must say we have our backs to the wall and we play against a top, top team. So I can understand the scepticism of people. But we have to prove them wrong. We’ve played great Bayern teams, at least as good as the one we play tomorrow, and beaten them.”
“We don’t look at the history. We look at the potential performance on the day. That’s what we try to do. The history doesn’t play the game. What will decide the game is the performance we produce. That comes from if we believe we can do it.”
And there’s no sign that tomorrow’s team selection will have even half an eye on Saturday’s game against Everton.
“We fight the whole season to be in the Champions League, not to go out,” he said. “We want to be in every competition.”
I say let’s them stop Alexis first!
No offense to Mert but I wouldn’t mind seeing Kos 1 and Kos 2 (Gabriel) for this one.
sure, let’s throw out our most expirienced centre half because it’s the cool thing to do. It amazed me how much we underrate our own players
It’s not underrating- I see nothing wrong with adjusting players slightly to adapt to certain opponents. We’re against arguably the most clinical striker in world football, with some of the quickest and trickiest midfielders behind him, I can see why playing Gab makes sense. I actually can’t decide who I’d rather start- love mertesacker but he can be caught out too easily when bellerin occasionally gets caught upfield. He can stand too square on to the opposition, leaving an easy ball in behind. Anyway, clearly it’s mertesacker, so let’s hope that doesn’t happen tomorrow! (also I’m not advocating swapping the… Read more »
Will be interesting to see which pairing Wenger goes with. Gabriel and Kos are certainly the most mobile which may be best, but then again Per knows the German players well and has experience against Bayern that Gabriel doesn’t.
Against the quality of Bayern, experience any day.
He may have scored five goals in nine minutes but Theo Walcott scores when he wants.
Well, in this case Lewandosky probably doesn’t want Theo to score.
Theo Walcott scores when he wants.
So, how long are we gonna have to wait for walcott to score 5 goals?
I guess we have to wait when he wants in the mood?
So that confirms that Per will start. I was hoping Gabs would get the nod.
Thought Gabriel would be brought back for this one.
and why would you want to do that?
Lewandowski will find it harder to score than usual.
It’ll be difficult for Lewandoski to score from inside Koscielny’s back pocket, not least because he’ll be sharing the space in there with Muller.
Don’t forget Messi’s in there too!
If you stop him,what about Mueller and the others?The thing is every gunner
must play as a cohesive unit. Then and only then can Arsenal have a chance.
Incidentally why not take a leaf from Chelsea’s win over Barca in the cl final?
Barcelona were overwhelming favourites but yet wer e beaten by Chelsea’s
defensive tactics.
kill them in 20 minutes like manu trash, then sit back.
I will go into this game with an insane, beer-fueled confidence of a 2-0 win.
“The history doesn’t play the game”. Brilliant
I really like to see the special atmosphere at Emirates stadium tonight. just like the night we beat the shit out of Cataluynya cunts.
Bayern thrive on precision passing. We are gonna have to stop their midfielders while at the same time look out for the occasional over the top balls to Muller,Lewandowski and Costa.
Vs leicester and Vs Watford Mertesacker struggled immensly anytime the ball was played over the top.
Common sense would be to bring Gabriel in.
The way Watford made our defence look a shambles at times, my prediction is Bayern will tear it to shreds
Watford were playing really well in the first half, I just cant figure out if that’s because the Arsenal played bad defensively, or Watford just had a great game.
Anyway, forget Watford where we ran out 0-3 winners. What about our losses to Olympios and Dinamo? Bayern tore them to shreds…
Watch us thrash Bayern with a tactical masterplan. I am quietly confident
I had a dream last night, we beat them 2-1
hope not your wet dream?
Everton is much more important this week
Think it’s going to be a case of having to outscore them. Saying that, we do have the best defence in the Premier League this season…although that’s not saying a great deal.
I will sound pessimistic by saying that we will probably get murdered out there tonight. However, if you expect that kind of game, it can only get better from that point and not much worse. So, prepare for the worst, hope for the best! Cheers and be courageous out there boys!
The art of war says Arsenal will win.