Manchester City vs Arsenal (16/17)

Team news:
Arsenal: Arsenal midfielder Aaron Ramsey is close to fitness but remains unavailable. Striker Danny Welbeck is also still out, but will resume full training next week.

Man City: Manchester City confirmed on Friday that midfielder Ilkay Gundogan sustained knee ligament damage in Wednesday's 2-0 win against Watford. Vincent Kompany and Fabian Delph are still sidelined, while Sergio Aguero and Fernandinho remain suspended.



MANAGER
Arsenal need little introduction to Pep Guardiola, having faced him four times as Barcelona manager and four times as Bayern Munich boss. With six league titles from seven seasons as a coach, not to mention the Champions League twice too, Guardiola has attempted to implement a proactive possession-based side at Manchester City, with mixed results so far. Going forward City are occasionally enthralling, but defensively there have been serious problems – last weekend’s 4-2 defeat at Leicester City was an example of the disconnect between the centre-backs.

FORMATION
Who knows? Guardiola was renowned as a 4-3-3 man for the majority of this time at Barcelona, but increasingly became experimental with his formations at Bayern Munich and has taken things to the next level at Manchester City.

Although he started the season with a rough 4-1-4-1 shape, Guardiola has increasingly experimented with a three-man defence, fielding systems that have appeared as 3-2-2-3 against Everton and 3-2-4-1 against Chelsea. However, after that Leicester thrashing and questions about the three-man defence in general, we may see a more traditional 4-1-4-1 system here.

STRENGTHS
At their best, City play quite wonderful passing combinations in midfield, thanks to the use of both Kevin De Bruyne and David Silva in a midfield trio, probably just ahead of Fernando this weekend.

With two outright wide players – two of Nolito, Raheem Sterling and Nolito – stretching the play on both flanks, City open up the opposition and allow De Bruyne and Silva to cut through quickly and incisively. The absence of the suspended Sergio Aguero, however, means they’re less potent in front of goal.


DANGERMAN
De Bruyne has been sensational this season. Capable of dribbling, assisting, scoring and roaring forward on the counter-attack, there are periods where it feels like the Belgian is impossible to stop. In the recent home defeat to Chelsea, he repeatedly drifted to the right from his central starting position before whipping devilish crosses into the box, giving another dimension to City’s play.

AREAS TO TARGET
The defence has looked particularly nervous in recent weeks, regardless of whether Guardiola has used three or four at the back. John Stones has made repeated mistakes in possession, Aleksandar Kolarov still hasn’t convinced in a central role, Nicolas Otamendi can be very impetuous, and with defensive midfielder Fernandinho suspended the defenders also lack protection.

http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archive/20161216/scouting-report-man-city-v-arsenal

Watch John Stone have his best game of his against us.

Fully expect him to score the winning goal and hopefully its for us.

Literally 0 chance we get anything from this game lmao.

Not even being negative.

3 losses this season all without Mustafi in the line up.

A point might be a lot to ask, even though we are undefeated in past 7 games against them.

I'm going to make a bold prediction and say that we will win this one, or at least not lose. We usually play well against Man City and they are missing some key players. Alexis vs Otamendi/Stones/Kolarov should be fun. On the other end, de Bruyne is the biggest threat but he kind of goes missing in big games-- so unless we do some retarded mistakes defensively we should be able to contain him.

We need to win this ffs

You guys should get something...Look at all the players they have out. Important ones no less

That being said, hoping for a draw

Had written a post for this match, but got logged out.

Everything is unfair on us, Arsenal fans.

Hope we win with a cleansheet, COYG!

Lets Go COYG

Looking forward to this one. The managers have both said some complimentary things beforehand so I fully expect it will turn ugly at some point

Come on Arsenal

Theoooooo, so composed

Perfect start

We need to get a second goal before half time, i can't see us holding on to a one goal lead for the rest of the game especially with the way we are surrendering possession at the moment

Why are we so bad at killing teams off

I'm not confident in us keeping a clean sheet if we let City attack us for 95% of the half. Need to bring on Giroud, perfect game for him-- he'll help us bring those long balls to ground and pin them back more often.

Decent half but we need to keep the ball better in the second half, we are turning possession way too easily

the goal looked offside but that was poor from us, giving the ball away easily again

Like clockwork

Seriously !!
This is the worse i have seen us with the ball this season

The team is defending too deep at the moment and inviting too much pressure. We are going to concede soon if we don't push up a bit

Oh well, that was coming to be honest. We haven't played football at all today, too timid with the ball.

Amazing that Wenger has sent the team into two big away games this week with such a shit attitude. Limp and timid in both games.