On Thursday evening the Champion’s League draw for the group stages took place in Monaco and decided the fate of many teams across Europe. Arsenal didn’t fair that well with a tough group once again but it could be worse we could have Man City’s group.
Arsenal were drawn with Borussia Dortmund, Galatasaray and Anderlecht which all in all isn’t a bad draw on paper but with the team not currently at their best it could provide an issue in the group stages.
Dortmund will be Arsenal’s main worry in this group, Klopp and Wenger have such a deep mutual respect for each others philosophies that the football played between these two teams is a meeting of minds, two very intelligent managers at the helm of their teams and it always shows on the pitch.
Playing Dortmund is always exciting because you get to see their fabulous organised and clean football but nerve racking at the same time because if you are not excellent on the night then they can’t be beaten. Playing them makes our team better but can also highlight our biggest weaknesses however I think Arsenal are wiser from the previous encounters and hopefully they will win at least one of the ties.
Galatasaray are a tough draw, they play very physically football and they get stuck right in but on the plus side they do run out of energy pretty quickly into the second half. They aren’t the powerful team they were a few years back and tactically they have suffered in the last year but they will not be easy to play but the team have a success rate against Turkish sides in the last few years.
Belgium team Anderlecht qualified for the Champion’s League after securing the Belgium league title last season. They are the easier of opponents in the group and Wenger will expect his team to be victorious in their games against them but will they be as easy to beat as everyone thinks?
We have a fairly tough group but right now it doesn’t matter so much who we have in our group at this current time, we could have City’s group or even Chelsea’s arguably easy draw but we still aren’t ready to play any of these teams. There is a definitive weakness within our squad and we all know where the improvement is needed but unless we rectify that by deadline day Arsenal will be in real trouble.
We barely scraped a win against Besiktas and that is a clear indication of how much we could struggle in the group stages. It’s an achievement to qualify for the Champion’s League every year for 17 but the real achievement is winning it or at least putting in a decent try.
Thank-you for reading
