Arsene Wenger says that the upcoming games against Bayern Munich and Chelsea are about preparing his team defensively for the new season.
The Gunners face the German champions in Shanghai today, before facing the Premier League champions in the same venue on Saturday.
The quality of the opposition is certainly a step-up from the teams we faced during the Australian leg of the pre-season tour, and the manager sees it as a chance to work on his side’s defensive set-up.
“In the first two games we focused mainly on attacking and in the second part of the tour we will have to focus on defending and attacking because we play against two big opponent,” he said.
“The expectation [against Bayern] is to deal with a quality game and to come out of the game with more confidence. That means we play with the quality we have shown in our first two games, and to win the game.”
The weather conditions in China have been extremely hot, and the Frenchman admits it’s been tough for the players.
“We trained hard yesterday and today as well,” he said, “so I think physically we have suffered a little bit.
“This is another pre-season game and it is good for us to get competition.”
The Bayern game kicks off at 12.20 UK time.
‘Come out of the game with more confidence’. Haha, lol, etc
Will be good to see if the three man defence works against both of them. No reason why we can’t get confidence if we win or draw (or even a narrow defeat v Bayern given the 5-1s last season).
We won…
I don’t mind playing Bayern, but playing Chelsea I think is kind of stupid. All it would take is one ‘accidental’ bad challenge on lets say Lacazette from one of their players and that’s pretty much our season done before a balls even been kicked. It would be a seriously cynical thing to happen but with the competitiveness being so high in the Premier League, I could genuinely see it happening.
Come on you gooners
Not sure I’ll get very good odds?
But I’m going 5-1 Bayern, this really isn’t very good preparation, Bayern are much much better than we are.
Nice to hear such positive outlook from a “fan”
if Arsene and the club had my image of the club our players and where we are currently at? Then I’d like to think they wouldn’t have let us get to where we currently are.
It’s almost like finishing outside the top4 is unacceptable but not winning the title and getting smashed in the last 16 of the CL is perfectly acceptable.
We won mate
Bayern’s first team might be amazing, but it is pre-season so both teams won’t be 100% and hopefully some of Bayern’s youth will be playing.
What is puzzling is Wenger’s comments on it being defensive preparation when we only have 4(5 including the ox) of our first team defenders even with the squad.
Defending is done by the whole team, not just the defenders.
Both will play not as serious as CL dude, max goal difference probably only 3 since both team will hold back a bit
I told we’d do it.
Never doubted it for a second.
On a bit of an unrelated note, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone enjoy themselves on tour as much as Elneny. The guy is just full of smiles which is nice to see!
He seems like a very nice, jolly personality. I love his smile too.
If the Lord likes him, I like him
Is this game on Arsenal player, like previous pre-season games? although I’m not a fan of playing Premier league teams in pre season, I think Bayern is a good test for us. We played well against them for 90 minutes unfortunately it was over both games. If we can keep focus I am excited to see how we do.
Let’s bash the f##k out of em.