What Arsenal must not do against West Ham

Gabriel & White Have to Defend Their Lanes vs Michail Antonio

Starting the season just as he finished the previous one, Antonio has now gone seven league matches without a goal. Numbers tell one story, and are usually just foreshadowing to Arsenal doing something against the grain, but Antonio’s threat remains pertinent.

An aggressive runner with and without the ball, this is going to be a game for Gabriel and Benjamin White to show their physical sides.

Antonio is always looking to run the channels. His stretching of the back four is one of the primary ways that the Irons push their lines up, and letting him win those one-on-one battles early on will be what disrupts the flow of what Arsenal want to do and will set the panic in.

Gabriel chopped Nathan Redmond down after two minutes in the Southampton game and he can’t afford to do so again. You do not want to spend 85 minutes against Antonio on a booking.

Following the runs into the lanes behind the central defenders and matching the physicality is one of the key ways to nullify West Ham’s overall threat: he wins corners, free-kicks, gets shots off and brings others into play. Try not to let him, even if that’s far easier said than done.

But this is a West Ham side whose attack is not firing on all cylinders. They’re lacking cohesion in the final third and shutting down Antonio early doors with some meaty challenges or statement pieces of defending to let him know he’s in for a tough can dampen their confidence straight off the bat.

This, believe it or not, a good time to be playing West Ham.