Arsenal and Atletico hold up the mirror to each other? – Crazy people from the suburbs

We’re back for a match day and it’s a tricky day with Simeone’s Atletico Madrid coming to town to spoil our party and our recent form by picking up three points in this horrible major league format.

Arteta knows a win today would be important and with 15/16 points likely the target for a top eight qualification from this stage, you’re really looking at wins in games like tonight to get a foothold in the next round of the competition.

I talked a little about Atletico yesterday, but when I think about it, I often think of the team that frustrated Wenger all those years in the Europa League. That Atletico Madrid team was better than us, they were more physically dominant, they played more robust football with players like Godin which made them difficult to break down and we saw that for a few years if I remember correctly. But we haven’t seen many of them since before COVID and so I’ve been watching over the last 24 hours how much they’ve changed from that side back then.

Indeed, after doing a very basic review of what we can expect, it looks like a mix of that defensive balance with more creative offensive outputs. They have Sorloth, they have Grizemann, they have Alvarez and they currently have a seven-game unbeaten streak. This includes a 5-2 defeat to Real Madrid and it appears that in this match they deployed an old-fashioned 4-4-2 to beat their City rivals. In this match, they exposed Madrid’s wide areas, attacking down the flanks and looking to land blows via crosses into the box.

Sounds familiar, huh?

If that’s the approach tonight, we’ll have two teams who look like they’re holding a mirror up to each other, so it may come down to who can best deploy their strengths:

• Solved at the back
• Winning duels in midfield
• Exploit space in large areas

So we could see this match won/draw/lost depending on who lines up on the flanks of each team. For us, I don’t think you can look further than Saka on the right, but will Arteta go with Trossard again given he scored on Saturday? Or is he looking to exploit the potential space available by giving Martinelli playing time? In our last outing against Olympiacos, Martinelli got on the scoresheet thanks to good work from Big Vik, so I’m particularly interested to know how Arteta wants to line up in the top three. For me, I feel like Gabi is made for the Champions League and if we need a runner in Madrid, I think Gabi might be more suited than Leo.

There might also be a question to ask about the three midfielders. Zubimendi and Rice are – one would think – the first choices to think about, but Eze was more against Fulham. Part of this could be because he was facing a deep, low block and that was difficult to impose on the game; That doesn’t happen in the Champions League, so while there could be an argument for perhaps a Nwaneri unlocking the defensive side of Atletico Madrid’s game, perhaps giving Eze another chance to impress in Europe’s premier competition is a good way to go.

Whatever Arteta decides, I hope it’s not with a more combative and seasoned midfielder like Rice, Zubi and Merino. I just don’t think it works well enough if he picks Martinelli and then Merino as well. There’s just not enough creativity in ball movement and so personally, if Merino were to start, I would have thought it would be at the expense of Rice or Zubimendi, to give one of them a rest. Arteta certainly shuffled his squad in the last Champions League game, but I think the quality and caliber of the opponents that day were different to tonight, so I think Arteta might think about keeping a similar team to the one that played at the weekend. Given our game against Palace is in five days’ time, he might see that gap between games as enough to leave some of the usual names on the team sheet each week.

I’ll find it interesting to see what Atletico does with Calafiori tonight, as I assume he will start. From an offensive standpoint, do they put anyone on him when he pops up in that half-space on the left side? But also, what do their creative actors do with the space it frees up? Is this a danger for us? We’ll have to see.

Unfortunately, I’m returning this afternoon from a naughty weekend in Portugal, so I won’t be able to make it to the Emirates in time to watch it, but I will be able to see it on TV and hopefully from the comfort of my sofa I’ll see us collect three more valuable points at home. Then I’ll see you all tomorrow for a little debriefing. See you soon then.