Arsenal vs Manchester City: The one thing we’re all looking for

The season is almost here, and Arsenal open with Manchester City. Here is the one thing we all want to see in the opener, without question.

Arsenal’s opener is nothing to scoff at. In fact, it’s pretty much as intimidating as they come. No wait, it is as intimidating as they come. It’s against a team that scored 100 goals last season which, needless to say, doesn’t happen very often.

But the Gunners, as always, have a ton of optimism brewing underneath the frustrations of the past two years. There has always been optimism, but the optimism this time is based in something different.

It’s based in a lot of the same players, but with more gaps filled. It’s based in a new manager, a new philosophy and, well, there’s just a lot of reason to believe.

That said, Manchester City is obviously still a huge test. The biggest. And while we shouldn’t be expecting a grand arse-whooping for our boys in red, nor should we expect to completely understand everything to make sense.

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But I think it’s safe to say that there is one thing we are all looking for in this match-up. That one thing is a defense that looks like they didn’t just meet on a dating app and are trying to establish a line of communication that doesn’t involve shrugging and confusion.

And by defense, I of course mean the centerback pairing, which figures to be Shkodran Mustafi and Sokratis, seeing as how we suddenly have no other options. And with no other options, we have to hope that these two, both of whom had their fair share of problems (and lots of them) in their respective set-ups last year, can figure it out.

They are facing one of the best attacking set-ups in Europe, hands down. One of the best.

If we draw 0-0, I’ll be thrilled. I know we can score goals. I know that, in the long run, we can be the team we set out to be on the offensive side of things. That isn’t the question here. The question here is if we can stop other teams from having their way with this defense.

So what will it be then? Will we cave under a potent attack or will we stand strong and actually look like we know what the hell we’re doing out there? We can’t answer that question yet.