PSV v Arsenal: the team and a reminder of how good the group round was

 

 

By Bulldog Drummond

• PSV v Arsenal latest thoughts and some more excuses (of course)
• PSV v Arsenal: the game the media seek to avoid
• PSV v Arsenal: Can Arsenal match a team that has scored 3 goals a game this season?

In the build up to tonight’s game Football 365 have a quote from Paul Merson for Sky saying, “I hope Mikel Arteta stops playing Mikel Merino up front. I can’t get my head around that one. I know he came on against Leicester and scored twice but Leicester are Leicester, they’re not very good.

“I would play Raheem Sterling up front. He’s lively. Defenders will be happy to play against Merino every day of the week. He’s not a centre forward. At least Sterling’s played up there before.

So pulling all this together, we know that the injured are Havertz, Saka, Martinelli, Jesus and Tomiyasu.   Which leads Sports Mole to give us the team as

Raya;

Timber, Saliba, Gabriel, Lewis-Skelly;

Odegaard, Partey, Rice;

Nwaneri, Merino, Trossard

Below is the Champions League table as it stood at the conclusion of the opening League programme of eight games each.

As we can see Arsenal got five points more than PSV, but scored the same number of goals as the opposition tonight.  However, the trick was in the defence which conceded over one goal a game; nine fewer than tonight’s opposition.

 

 

As a result of not finishing in the top eight PSV had to play a play-off game against Juventus, whom they beat once and lost to once, but finished up going through by scoring more goals in their victory.  Apparently, the “ex-Spurs winger Ivan Perisic, described PSV as “not a team”. The 36-year-old said he was “angry” about the lack of togetherness in the squad, calling for things to “change quickly”.  That comes from the TNT website    But then we should note that this commentary was made by a man who played for Tottenham, and must be getting a bit fed up with the fact that all the teams he seems to play for don’t quite play as well as they talk.  Funny that.

But of course, this is the media and this is Arsenal, so negativity abounds.   The TalkSprout (sorry I may have typed that wrong) website says that Arsenal are approaching this match with “their worst goal scoring form this season with the North London side having failed to score in three of their previous four fixtures following their 0-0 draw to Nottingham Forest at the City ground last week.”

And what they don’t tell us, as ever, is how many other clubs have gone through a similar spell.

Mikel Arteta’s side received direct qualification to the round of 16 because of a very solid group stage campaign in which the club finished third behind only Liverpool and Barcelona.

And although PSV won their way through to this game, it should be remembered that this was PSV’s first in the Champions League knock-out stages since they defeated Arsenal 1-0 in 2007.

Indeed these are dodgy days for PSV who haven’t won any of their last four league games, their latest result being a 3-2 loss away to Go Ahead Eagles despite being in front with just a quarter of an hour to play.

But they have yet to be beaten in the Champions League on their own ground, and in fact their only home defeat was against Go Ahead Eagles in one of the domestic cups.

The key to this game seems to be the PSV defence which is not very experienced and so might not quite know what to make of an Arsenal forward line lacking all the club’s forwards.  And we surely must admit this is quite a novel approach to playing in Europe.  You never know it might catch on.

As ever, we enter the game full of hope.