It’ll Be Difficult For Arsenal At The Parc des Prince – Alan Shearer

EPL legend, Alan Shearer has come out to say that Arsenal fans at Emirates Stadium stopped supporting the team after Ousmane Dembele’s goal. He recently had his say while speaking to the press, and fans have been reacting.

According to him, it was an amazing atmosphere at the Emirates up until the Frenchman’s early goal, and that strike definitely did more than enough to kill the home team’s momentum right from the start.

Shearer added that Arsenal might still have a chance in the return leg, but it’ll be very difficult at PSG’s stadium.

His words, “It was an amazing atmosphere at the Emirates before Arsenal’s Champions League semi-final first leg against PSG but that changed after three minutes with PSG’s goal. When you go to a hostile ground, where you know the atmosphere is going to be amazing for the home team, you want to keep the ball and, if possible, get an early goal just to kill the crowd. PSG did that.

Arsenal never recovered. For the first 20 or 30 minutes, they didn’t know what day it was. Then they recovered and were the better team for ten or 15 minutes before half-time – and they didn’t need half-time.

There were two really, really good chances for Arsenal. One in the first-half with Gabriel Martinelli one-on-one and then a one-on-one in the second half involving Leandro Trossard. Other than that, I know they had the disallowed offside goal which took far too long considering he was half a yard offside. The positive was that it only ended 1-0. It could’ve been a lot worse.

At 1-0 going into the second leg, Arsenal still have a chance. What was already a difficult opportunity against a very good side has become a little bit more difficult, but it’s not impossible.

Arsenal missed Thomas Partey in the first leg against PSG. I’m not sure that Dembele has that amount of space in the first three minutes if Partey is playing. He’ll be playing next week which means we’ll hopefully see a better Declan Rice because it’s not his best role, sitting and trying to sweep up play as a number six.

Rice is better when he’s driving forward and there was one time last night where he was able to drive forward and that was what created the opportunity for [Leandro] Trossard.

Arsenal’s pressing has to be better. For the first half-an-hour in the first leg, they didn’t know when to press or sit and it looked really confusing in terms of when and how to go. They didn’t get that right and ended up getting picked off. That can improve massively, but they don’t have to go for it straight away. If it’s still 1-0 at half-time in Paris then that’s fine.

Arsenal just have to be a little bit more patient, go with what happens, keep it tight and don’t concede because if they concede the first goal early on then it’ll be pretty much curtains for them.”

WOW.