We’re back again for a match day and it’s a tricky one in the shape of Simeone’s Atletico Madrid who come to town looking to spoil our party and recent form by picking up three points in this horrible large-league format.

Arteta knows that a win today would be a big one and with 15/16 points probably the target for qualification in the top eight of this stage, you are really looking at wins in games like tonight to get you one foot into the next round of the competition.

I talked about Atletico a little yesterday, but when I think about them I often have the side that frustrated Wenger all those years back in the Europa League. That Atletico Madrid side were better than us, they were more physically dominant, they played a more robust brand of football with the likes of Godin making them difficult to break down and we came across that for a couple of years if I remember rightly. But we haven’t seen much of them since pre COVID and so I’ve been looking over the last 24 hours at how much they have changed since that side back in the day.

Indeed, having done a very basic style of review on what we can expect, it looks like a blend of that defensive balance with more creative attacking outlets. They have Sorloth, they have Grizemann, they have Alvarez and they have a seven-game unbeaten run that they are on at the moment. That includes a 5-2 beat-down of Real Madrid and it looks like in that game they deployed a bit of an old-school 4-4-2 to best their City rivals. In that game they exposed Madrid’s wide areas, attacking down the flanks and looking to deal blows via crosses into the box.

Sounds familiar, eh?

If that’s the approach tonight then we’ll get two teams who will look like they are holding up a mirror to one another, so it might be a question of who can deploy their strengths the best:

  • Resolute at the back
  • Win the duels in midfield
  • Leverage space in wide areas

So we might see this game won/drawn/lost based on who lines up on the flanks for each team. For us I don’t think you can look any further than Saka on the right, but does Arteta go with Trossard again given he scored on Saturday? Or does he look to leverage potential space that is available by giving Martinelli the game time? In our last outing against Olympiacos Martinelli got on the scoresheet after good work from Big Vik, so I’m particularly interested in finding out how Arteta wants to line up in the front three. For me it feels like Gabi is suited for the Champions League and if we’re going to need a runner at the Madrid right back, I think Gabi might be more suited than Leo.

There might also be a question to be asked about the midfield three too. Zubimendi and Rice are – you would think – the first choices to think of, but Eze was quite against Fulham. Some of that might just be because he was up against a deep low block and that was difficult to impose on the game; that doesn’t happen in the Champions League so whilst there could be an argument to be made for perhaps an Nwaneri to unlock Atletico Madrid’s defensive side of the game, perhaps giving Eze another shot to impress in Europe’s premier competition is a good way to go.

Whatever Arteta decides, I hope it isn’t with a more combative and battle-hardened midfield that is Rice, Zubi and Merino. I just don’t think it works well enough if he chooses Martinelli and then Merino as well. There just isn’t enough creative on the ball movement and so personally if Merino is going to start, I would have thought it would be at the expense of either Rice or Zubimendi, to give one of them some rest. Arteta certainly shuffled his pack in the last Champions League game, but I think the quality and calibre of the opponents on that day was different to tonight’s opposition, so I think Arteta might be thinking about keeping the side similar to the one that played at the weekend. Given our game against Palace is a full five days from now, he might see that gap between games as enough to rest up some of the usual names on the team sheet each week.

I am going to find it interesting to see what Atletico do with Calafiori tonight, because I am assuming he’ll start. In an attacking sense do they put somebody on him when he pops up in that half space on the left hand side? But equally, what do they do with their creative wide players with the space that he vacates? Is that a danger for us? We’ll have to see.

Unfortunately I’m flying back from a cheeky weekend away in Portugal this afternoon, so I won’t be able to get to The Emirates in time to watch it, but I will be able to catch it on TV so hopefully from the comfort of my sofa I will see us pick up another valuable three points at home. Then I’ll catch you all tomorrow for a bit of a debrief. See you then.