Arsenal vs Manchester City: 5 key players in colossal clash

4. Lucas Torreira

In my little “preamble,” I talked about how impossible it’s looking to expect our defense to slow down this 63-goal Manchester City attack, but it won’t solely be up to them. As we saw against Chelsea, a lot of the success from the defense came from having a trio of midfielders that could successfully slow down, if not completely stop, Chelsea’s build-up before it could spread its wings and fly.

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With City relying so much on the build up, Lucas Torreira can be a true hero if he can ravage the middle of the pitch and be the disruptor stopping City from getting comfortable. They have a lot of ways that they can score, but if you start picking off those different ways one by one, you have a better chance of limiting the damage.

Torreira has been a big time performer in big matches this year – at least most of them – and while he needs some ideal parameters around him, he’s definitely capable of upholding his end of the bargain if those parameters are met.

He doesn’t need to do much more than be an absolute nuisance to the city build up. From there, he can give the ball to those more capable of leading the charge, which leads us perfectly into key player No. 3.