Arsenal will seek calm, but Brugge are no pushovers

Arsenal suffered their first defeat, in any competition, since the end of August against Aston Villa at the weekend. The defence has been blitzed and it resulted in a very makeshift backline. The 25/26 campaign has been focused on Arsenal’s defence and how elite it has been, but take away three of the main centre backs and it resulted in a heart-breaking 2-1 loss. However, Arsenal have the opportunity to redeem themselves with a Champions League tie against Club Brugge. The Champions League has been Arsenal’s most consistent competition, as they’ve won all five games and only conceded once. While a win isn’t imperative, I think Mikel Arteta will want to get his team back to winning ways. While that seems like an obvious statement, a lot of fans are calling for this game to be a playground for our fringe players and youngsters. As much as I do agree with that sentiment, Club Brugge have the quality to punish us.

Club Brugge currently sit 3rd in their domestic league, a little behind the league leaders Union St.Gilloise. But, they sit all the way down in 26th in the Champions League. This makes them candidates for elimination, but a win can take them into the qualifying stages, so they have everything to play for.

Their results to date include; 4-1 win against Monaco, 2-1 loss against Atlanta, 4-0 loss against Bayern Munich, 3-3 draw against Barcelona and a 3-0 loss against Sporting Lisbon.

There’s quite a bit to dissect in there. They’ve suffered heavy defeats away from home, but haven’t yet lost at the Jan Breydelstadion. This unnerves me as they’ve welcomed Monaco and Barcelona, the latter of which were almost European champions last season. The same goes for their domestic league campaign, they’ve only lost once on home turf. But, that defeat came just two match days ago against Royal Antwerp. Antwerp sit 10th in the league. That defeat encapsulates a rather disappointing run of form. Since the 3-3 draw against Barcelona at the start of November, Brugge have lost four times and only won twice. It’s fair to say that they’re currently in a rut and this has caused them to slide down their league table. However, Brugge are a production line of talent and this season is no different. They can bleed new life into the team at any stage and we’ll likely see a few new names on the roster when they face Arsenal.

Club Brugge have actually sacked their manager Nicky Hayen two days before the clash against Arsenal. Ivan Leko will replace him. This could mean an entirely new set up that Arsenal won’t have prepared for.

Player to watch: Christos Tzolis

The Greek international has enjoyed a brilliant campaign so far and has attracted interest from across Europe, but still remains a Club Brugge player. He has 12 goal contributions this season, in all competitions, which makes him the main man to lead the Brugge attack. He predominantly plays out on the left of the attack, but can play on the right side too.

Brugge set up in quite a similar to way to Arsenal. The Gunners and the Belgian side both adopt a 4-2-3-1 formation. They play with a lone striker who has two wide players flanking him, then a man will sit behind the striker and he’ll be the one who orchestrates the team. Whether Ivan Leko will adopt the same system against Arsenal remains to be seen, but to focus his side on attacking and maintaining possession could be the best approach. The Gunners will almost certainly rotate, but it just depends on how much. If it’s a heavily rotated side then Leko could use that to his advantage and expose the lack of cohesion in the Arsenal ranks.

As I mentioned in my game review against Aston Villa, this is how I’d line up against Brugge. It’s been reported that Arsenal won’t register Gabriel Jesus in the place of the injured Cristhian Mosquera, despite them being allowed to. For me, I’d replace Jesus with Madueke. There clearly needs to be some sort of rotation for this fixture and we won’t know whether William Saliba or Leandro Trossard will make the squad until the team news is released. That’s just how Arteta chooses to announce a return to the squad. Declan Rice, Bukayo Saka, Eberechi Eze and Martin Zubimendi shouldn’t really be seeing any minutes in this fixture. Save them for Wolves.

Predicted Result: Brugge 0-2 Arsenal

Despite needing to rotate, I think Arsenal’s depth is good enough to beat Brugge quite comfortably. It won’t be pretty, but it’ll be effective. If we can make it 6 wins from 6 then we can give ourselves some extra rotation when we face Kairat Almaty and Inter Milan. Fingers crossed and tune in for my game review which will go live on Thursday!