The Rue to the Final

Ben White right back. Jurrien Timber left back. Myles Lewis-Skelly and Declan Rice sharing the holding midfield and left eight roles. Mikel Merino up front. That is what I wanted to see when the team sheet for PSG was announced yesterday evening. I had, though, reluctantly accepted on my way to the match that my hope was very unlikely to be fulfilled because it would have meant a few too many moving parts.

I have never been particularly enamoured with Leandro Trossard as the focal point in our team, especially when starting a big game. And, frustratingly, I didn’t have much faith that he would be the player to dig us out of a tricky situation or give the rest of the team much confidence in being an outlet from the outset against a quality outfit like PSG. I can’t help but feel that that may have intangibly impacted the team’s confidence in some way. It goes without saying that the players’ nerves would’ve been shredded regardless, and some level of trepidation was clearly a factor in how poorly we started the game.

Trossard’s goal-scoring performances up front against Ipswich away and Palace at home in the two games prior to PSG felt like false hope for the big one given the massive gap in quality with Ipswich and how little both teams truly cared in the Palace game with both clubs having bigger fish to fry elsewhere.

There is also the factor of moving Declan Rice back from his marauding left eight position to a holding six role. We lost far too much of Rice’s box-to-box play going forward with him sitting in a deeper role to accommodate Trossard starting up front.

Yes, moving Lewis-Skelly from left back to midfield to accommodate moving Merino up front and benching Trossard would’ve been a big call by Mikel Arteta. But it was disappointing that the manager was perhaps not as bold as I would have hoped for him to be.

MLS can handle CM role. (Credit Arsenal.com

Almost nobody foresaw MLS being anywhere near as successful at left back as he has been when he was first introduced to the team. I therefore don’t buy the idea that moving him from left back to his more natural position in midfield for this game would have been too much for him to handle. I happen to think there is a fair chance he would have thrived under the challenge given everything we have seen from the player in his short career thus far. And that the risk would have been worth the punt in the circumstances. It might even have thrown PSG off the scent with their preparations too.

I accept the premise that keeping as settled a team as possible is generally a good strategy in most cases. You don’t want to upset the applecart when you can avoid it. But sometimes needs must. Somehow, we have found ourselves in a situation where Mikel Merino is a superior option up front in our team than Leandro Trossard. And, for me, that should have been the basis from which we built the team backwards.

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  Merino better equipped than Trossard (Credit – Arsenal.com)

Granted, Ben White’s recent injury record has been a major concern, and there were reasonable question marks about him starting at right back last night from a fitness perspective. Having said that, he did rejoin training with the squad before the game along with Mikel Merino, and White was our first substitute of the night against PSG, albeit in the 83^rd minute. Everything we have seen and heard about White over the years tells us there is a good chance that he would have risen to the challenge to start the game, at least for 60 minutes.

There is something viscerally puncturing about conceding so soon after the opening whistle in a huge game. The collective wind in the stadium’s sails deflated. There was just a sense that PSG were too good for us all night, and we offered little threat to worry them in a meaningful way. Would their centre backs have been more worried battling Merino’s hold-up play than Trossard’s? Was there too much pragmatism and perhaps some fear that permeated our team partly due to our team selection? Intangibles are a magical thing in football because, by definition, you can’t quantify them. And Thomas Partey’s frustrating booking at the Bernabeu primarily created this selection issue along with Jorginho’s injury. But my overall sense to both questions is yes. And in games like this, the fine margins and borderline decisions are ever more crucial.

As the manager referred to in his post-match comments, we started the game poorly. And frankly, we were fortunate to only lose 1-0 by the final whistle. But the reality is we did only lose 1-0.

TP back.

We will have Partey back from suspension in the second leg next Wednesday. Rice will return to his left eight role. Assuming no new injury scares in the interim, I think it’s fair to assume the team selection for PSG away will almost certainly be Raya, Timber, Saliba, Kiwior, Lewis-Skelly, Partey, Rice, Ødegaard, Saka, Martinelli, Merino. And that would be a good example of getting as many of our best players in their best positions and as cohesively for the team overall as possible (there’s certainly a conversation about Ødegaard at present – he hasn’t looked the same player since his ankle injury).

If this does end up being the starting 11, hopefully the players will feel more confident that they can control the tempo of the game better and threaten the opposition from the opening whistle more than they were able to in the first leg. That task will be all the more difficult at what will be a bouncing Parc des Princes.

Clearly, PSG are a brilliant team and we simply didn’t have the quality or depth to sufficiently hurt them in the first leg. PSG will still be a brilliant team in the second leg, but putting our best feet forward from the get-go and with less fear will have to form part of the approach for us to have a good chance at progressing to the final. There will be a delicate balance between being brave and cavalier, which I imagine the manager will have been debating with his team selection yesterday.

And if we need inspiration, where better for the Arsenal men’s team to look than to the Arsenal women’s team overcoming a first leg Champions League semi-final deficit to a French team and winning the second leg away from home in France to reach the final …

Parminder Panesar

Arsenal fan since the 90s. Sharing the odd thought and musing.