I never expect to win up there and we very rarely do! Even when we had a much better side, in the early Wenger years, we struggled at their place.
Their high tempo and dynamism and their never say die attitude always gets the better of us. Man for man we're probably a better side (with the obvious exceptions), but they fight for every ball and win 60/40s against them, whereas we have too many lightweights that wilt and lose 60/40s in our favour. They're not great at the back, but we're weak as fuck up front and if you don't have a top notch striker to make the most of whatever we create, then we won't beat them.
I said that the Villa game was the most important of the season so far, which it was, because it was our chance to lay down a marker after City's loss, but we failed to turn up and blew it. This has now become the most important to date, because again we have a chance to make a powerful point by keeping this lot at bay and keeping City at arms length.
Trouble is, Zinchenko is gonna get roasted by Salah and Havertz will be wandering blindly around, fucking things up on the occasions he's involved. Our build up play is too pedestrian and even turgid at times and they won't give us a second on the ball. We need the tempo we played with last season, but that seems to have disappeared and too many in the side slow it down.
Desperately hope I'm wrong, but we'll lose this 2-0, or 3-1. I fear that will signal the end of our challenge for this season.
