Arsenal: Oh my goodness, everyone chill out, it’s only Napoli

Arsenal drew Napoli in the Europa League, and some people have already thrown in the towel. This is ridiculous, it’s only Napoli.

Perhaps Arsenal didn’t get lucky in their Europa League draw. They had a lot of other options that would have inspired some confidence, with Napoli probably being the worst of the bunch. But as the saying goes, if you want to win it, you’re going to have to beat the best at some point anyway. That isn’t the all-purpose argument I want to focus on though.

Rather, let’s talk about why Napoli aren’t an all-purpose Gunner killer. Because they are anything but. They are just as beatable as any other team. Maybe the Gunners haven’t proven a lot in their first two knock-out round matches, but that doesn’t mean the team can’t learn.

And when you get down to it, at the end of the second leg, they always came away victorious. No matter what happened previously, it ended up just fine.

The biggest threat from Napoli is their speed. When you boast the likes of Lorenzo Insigne, Dries Mertens and Jose Callejon, defenses sweat. And Arsenal’s defense doesn’t need any more reasons to sweat. They already struggle against the counter, and flyers like Napoli have are a major threat.

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But that doesn’t mean they aren’t defensible. The Gunners have faced fast attacks before and Unai Emery has been sensible about his approach. He doesn’t bother so much with expecting to outright stop the opponent’s attack, but rather focuses on matching their speed with his own, which he absolutely can do.

At the end of the day, no matter how stalwart this Napoli defense is, they are going to be just as susceptible to the Fab Four (it’s nice to say that again) than any other “top” defense out there. And as Mesut Ozil is, in his own right, and Italian-style player, he should be more excited for this tie than anyone else.

Not just that, but Napoli are a mid-table club at defending set-pieces, while the Gunners are one of the tops in England at scoring from set-pieces, so chalk up another advantage.

It’s not an easy draw, obviously. Perhaps the hardest we might have gotten. But the focus will be on the attacks and, I don’t care how much speed Napoli have, Arsenal have a better attack.

All it takes is scoring more goals. Who cares if we give up three goals in the process?