Laurent Koscielny believes that BATE Borisov will come to defend their 1-0 lead at the Emirates tomorrow night, but says Arsenal must be calm and ensure that they take their chances when they come.
The Gunners spurned some excellent chances to open the scoring in Belarus last week, and were punished when Stanislaw Dragun headed the home side in front with a goal that turned out to be the winner.
With plenty to put right in the second leg, the Arsenal skipper knows they’ll have to work hard to break down a team which will sit deep, and not as wasteful in front of goal if they want to qualify for the Round of 16.
“We need to find a good balance between attacking and defending,” he said.
“I think they will play with a deep block and wait to play on the counter-attack. We need to be focused on our tradition when we lose the ball, to try to win back the ball as soon as possible.
“We don’t want to give them chances to have a free-kick or corner. Afterwards, it’s about us being efficient in their box to score some goals.
“We don’t know if we will score early in the game or later, but we need to continue to play with calmness and focus.
“We can have some chances like we had in the first leg, but we need to be more efficient in both boxes.”
And the 33 year old stressed the potential importance of going the distance: not only is there a trophy but qualification for next season’s Champions League if we finish outside the top four.
“It is a top-level tournament,” he continued. “There is Chelsea, Napoli, Valencia so it I think it is a big competition, more than last year, and every year it is more intense.
“Last year Atletico Madrid won the cup, so for us it is big opportunity to go in the Champions League.
“Now we have a game in front of us like tomorrow to get to the next rounds and try to get to the final and be in the Champions League next season.”
Oh how we have gone from trying to overturn losses at Allianz Arena to trying to overturn a 1-0 scoreline against BATE Boristov… ??
Yes, from having to score at least 4 goals to progress, we’re just having to score the one now!
“We need to be focused on our tradition when we lose the ball, to try to win back the ball as soon as possible”
Isn’t our tradition let them score on their first and only shot of the game?
I thought it was to concede a goal a few seconds after conceding the first goal in the game.
It still bothers me that we didn’t seize the initiative in the first leg of the semi-final.
While it’s debatable if Wenger deserved it but I’m sure it would have been fitting for him to have won another significant trophy, as well as got us in the CL, something that he achieved almost throughout his reign.
fucking utter BULLSHIT, waiting moderation, arseblog / author, Andrew, who ever it is the stupid cunt wont post my comments for some reason, you are like a little kid, oh I don’t like your comments so im not going to post them, what sort of web site does that, this fucking sexist, racist, disgusting website NEVER ever won an award, your ALL just a bunch of fucking no good sons of bitches, fucking no good cunts, so fucking await moderation with this, cunt
‘for some reason’.
I urge the same!
Agree generally with Kos that we need to take our chances, but I agree with the Tim S article today that we need to take more chances. This isn’t a new problem, its the “Arsenal walk the ball into the goal” issue. We try to get too many chances that are highly likely to be converted, but overall that results in fewer shots, and perhaps ultimately in fewer goals.
Any sort of efficiency up top will CONSIDERABLY help our defense.
We need to take our chances.
Midfield was poor against Huddersfield but we were ok against Bate.
OTOH we did not fashion near enough efforts after the first 10 minutes never mind leaking the odd goal.