Steven Gerrard says Arsenal can beat Paris Saint-Germain if they ‘take them to places they don’t like to go’. Where does this PSG team not like to go? Basingstoke? Basildon? They’ll most certainly enjoy Budapest – anywhere with a patch of green is where Marquinhos, Joao Neves and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia like to be.
There you have just three vertebrae of a spine that seems to extend in every direction. For all of the individual star quality, it really is remarkable that Luis Enrique’s collective is still greater than the sum of its glittering parts.
And yet, there is a soft point, an area for Arsenal to exploit, as Gerrard alluded to in his search for a reason why Mikel Arteta’s side can beat PSG in the Champions League final.
He did not name it, specifically, because after witnessing what we did at the Allianz Arena, the strengths were too overwhelming and too persuasive to identify fallibility.
What follows also runs against the popular wisdom of Arsenal needing to focus solely on defence to win on May 30. PSG will score, you see, as they have done in 24 straight matches since mid-January. Arsenal, therefore, need to attack, and they do that by targeting goalkeeper Matvey Safonov.
Arsenal celebrate reaching the Champions League final – but it will be no easy task to beat PSG in Budapest
But there may be hope in the shape of PSG’s erratic Russian goalkeeper Matvey Safonov
Maybe it’s all just a trick of the eye, the fact he looks like Loris Karius making you believe that calamity could at any point reign. The Russian was perfectly competent in the 1-1 draw with Bayern Munich on Wednesday night and was only beaten by Harry Kane’s super strike in the 95th minute.
But I was at the Parc des Princes last month when PSG beat Toulouse 3-1 and Safonov, to borrow terrace vernacular, was dodgy. Encouragingly for Arsenal, particularly so from set-pieces.
Not only did he drop the ball from a corner when getting caught beneath a fairly routine delivery, allowing Toulouse to score, but he was at fault for giving away the corner in the first place, and comically so.
He had rushed from his area to make an interception but it proved to be a rush of blood – he missed the ball – and his side were soon bleeding from it. There were other jittery moments too, enough to provoke criticism from media and fans alike. Safonov did not take kindly to some of it.
‘I didn’t understand the point of your question,’ he scoffed at one journalist, exploring the theme of the criticism. ‘Why should I doubt myself? Explain to me why I should be stressed? Explain it to me? You don’t know? Then I don’t know either. As far as I’m concerned, nobody has said anything. Nobody has said anything to my face. But I don’t read the press, so I don’t know.’
When Arsenal’s analysis team sifts through PSG’s recent matches in hope of identifying vulnerability, those moments are the needles in the haystack. The fact it plays to Arsenal’s own strengths – set-pieces, crosses, big men – is the bonus, the reason to believe they can score a goal, the reason to believe they can win.
Arteta does not have to reinvent his side in the next three weeks. He does not have to coach Declan Rice to replicate the ball-playing wizardry of Fabian Ruiz, Vitinha and Neves. He does not have to ask Viktor Gyokeres to suddenly downsize and skill-up and nimbly find a way between Marquinhos and Willian Pacho. There is no need to break the glass on an emergency game-plan, no tactical theatre a la Pep Guardiola.
Safonov looks dodgy, particularly so from set-pieces which, of course, is one of Arsenal’s great strengths
Mikel Arteta doesn’t have to reinvent his side in the next three weeks. He doesn’t have to coach Declan Rice (left) to replicate the ball-playing wizardry of Fabian Ruiz, Vitinha and Neves (right)
No, the route to glory is simpler than all of that – lean hard on what you’re doing already. Win corners. Win free-kicks. Get the big men up from the back. Get the big men in from anywhere. Get Rice to land the ball on Safonov.
Get smart, play to your strengths, which are nicking goals from dead-balls and dead-locking the door at the other end. The doggedness of Gabriel and William Saliba might just be a match for the cunning of PSG’s alley cats in attack.
It was not last season, of course, over two legs of a semi-final. But Arsenal will have learned from that. You get the feeling they know what they are and what they’re not, and they’re comfortable with that identity.
Arteta’s Dirty Ball it may be, but the prizes that await this month sure are beautiful. Nobody remembers how the marble was quarried, only the statue.
