PSG are starting to show their nerves – which could help Arsenal

 

 

• • What Arsenal are lacking and what Tottenham are lacking.
  • How Jamie Carragher made fools of everyone with his gibberish statistics

Sorry for the late arrival of this post – we had a technical hitch, now hopefully resolved.

By Tony Attwood

While we are used to football clubs tracing their origins from the 19^th century, PSG whom Arsenal play in the Champions League semi-final, were not formed (from the amalgamation of other clubs) until 1970.  They gained a couple of titles in the early days but the big time didn’t come until 2013 when under new ownership and with ManC style money, they started winning all the time.  In the last ten years they have won the league eight times and come second twice.

And this season they have already won the league again, as French law now seems to decree, finishing 23 points ahead of Marseille.  But as with the days when Manchester City won the league all the time, people started to get rather bored with that and the fans demanded more – such as the Champions League.

So in recent games, the crowd have been parading a banner that says “Eliminate Arsenal”.   Unfortunately in the match in which the banner was revealed, things didn’t go to plan, as PSG lost 0-3 to Nice and the manager was forced into saying that having had 30 chances in their game against Nice and not scoring any of them, he was sure there would be no problem against Arsenal.

There’s no logic or indeed explanation in that, but it’s the sort of thing that some managers do say when cornered.  I suppose it sounds a bit better than the French for “We were crap”   (“Nous étions de la merde” maybe).

But the reason for the failure against Nice, who sit 24 points behind the league winners, was that (according to the PSG manager) the Nice goal keeper made some “incredible saves.”  He also claimed that despite the 3-0 defeat, PSG “deserved to win, no doubt about it.”

The basis for this seems to be that PSG dominated possession in that game and created twice as many chances as the opposition.   What the manager doesn’t seem to understand however is that neither issue counts.  It’s goals – although maybe they have a different counting system in Frace.

Although apparently there was also the point of “efficiency”.   Nice, he claims were 100% efficient, and PSG were not.

But what is particularly interesting is that while Arsenal have been resting a few players and rotating a little in league games, PSG have kept playing their full-strength league team throughout.   But somehow the efficiency has gone.

However, this does mean that Arsenal should have a fairly good idea which team PSG are going to put out for the Champs League semi-final.

Which takes us onto Aston Villa.   In the last round of the Champions League matches PSG beat Aston Villa in Paris 3-1, but then lost 3-2 in Birmingham.   After that first game Villa then beat Southampton away 3-0, and having beaten PSG also beat Newcastle United.   Then however they lost to Manchester City and Crystal Palace in their two most recent games, the latter being a 3-0 defeat.

This now leaves them seventh in the league, and looking for a place in next season’s Conference.   And this for a team that for quite a bit of this season was being talked up as a club really on the rise, under a manager whose only failure was at Arsenal, with the implication that was Arsenal’s fault rather than being the manager’s fault in agreeing to the purchase of Nicolas Pépé for £72m from Lille.   (He now plays for Villareal who are sixth in the Spanish League).

But back to the forthcoming semi-final, With four games to go, PSG are 23 points clear of the second placed club in the French league, having won 24, drawn six and lost one.    Which probably explains why, when they played Arsenal in the group stages of the Champs league, they had, as ever, one supporter who never once looked at the game, but instead looked at the other PSG fans and directed the constant singing and chanting.

Indeed we shouldn’t forget that having had a goalless draw with Atalanta in the first group stage game Arsenal came back with a 2-0 win over PSG on 1 October last year.

Arsenal are now unbeaten in eight games in all competitions having scored 26 goals in those eight games and conceded ten.  The media of course won’t give us much chance, but then they were sure we’d lose to Real Mad.   Which we didn’t.  Twice.