Arsenal: 5 key players to keep Champions League alive vs Olympiakos

Arsenal have a big one ahead of them as they try to treat Olympiakos as they did Newcastle. Here are five key players to get the knockout stages started out right.

Coming off a 4-0 win, I want to have all the confidence in the world in this Arsenal team and, to a certain extent, I do. But I also have that leery trepidation that it was a fluke. I don’t want to think that way, I just am. I can’t help it. I’m open to outside help.

I think it’s just that that win was so exciting that it’s practically impossible to follow that up. It’s almost a guarantee that this match against Olympiakos doesn’t live up to that standard. That doesn’t mean it can’t be a comprehensive and conclusive win. I have faith in that, but will it be as exciting?

That’s tough.

But the five guys I’m about to talk about have all the power to make this exactly that—just as exciting. Maybe even more so if we can sustain a consistent level of attacking play that we only crushed for maybe thirty minutes.

So let’s not waste any time here. Let’s get into the most important guys in this match, starting at the back with the newbie.

5. Pablo Mari

Defense is key. We’ve learned that while our attack slept. As long as our defense was in the match, holding down the fort, we still scrounged out results. Not exactly exciting results, and certainly not the kinds of results we want to get used to, but still results that showed improvement in the area of our biggest weakness.

Mikel Arteta made it clear that Pablo Mari was being saved for the Europa League, and that makes me think that it’s his time to start in this one. Especially because he’s on loan, and we really need to figure out what he can be counted on for as the season goes on. We need to figure out if we’re going to buy him and we won’t know unless he plays a lot of minutes.

He’s going to start here, and we need him to be conclusive, because a clean sheet goes a long way in these first legs. We know what we’re going to get out of Sokratis, or whoever starts next to him, but it’s the question mark that can put a lot of fears to bed if he can transform into an exclamation mark.

On to No. 4.