Manchester United vs Arsenal: The big Sunday preview

The Gunners visit the Red Devil’s Theatre of Dreams on Sunday in a curious turnaround of individual situations. This will be the first time in 5 years that Arsene Wenger’s side is ahead of Manchester United, the last time being in 2008 when Arsenal lost steam in their title challenge late into the season and finally lost out the title to United. This match promises to be unique in the sense that both the teams have a very good reason to win it.

For David Moyes, this is an opportunity to silence his critics who have raised questions about his overly-cautious tactics against big teams, which have resulted in only losses so far.

For Wenger, a win at Old Trafford will be the perfect topping after their win over Dortmund in Champions League. Arsenal have been seriously undermined by many football pundits even after their brilliant campaign till now. Some like Alen Hansen have gone on to say that, even though they have an embarrassment of riches in the midfield, their critical flaw still lies in their off-the-ball work-rate.

TEAM NEWS

MANCHESTER UNITED:

The big concern for United is the injury of Michael Carrick, which makes him a doubtful case for Sunday’s match. In his place United would have to choose from Cleverly, Fellaini and Jones to play in mid. Welbeck and Rafael are still out injured, and Smalling would be deputising at right-back in his place.

ARSENAL:

Walcott, Podolski and Chamberlain remain out injured for Arsenal and Wilshere will be given a late fitness test though he will not be in the starting line-up, which is for certain.

ARSENAL – ZERO WINGER TACTIC

With the coming of Flamini and Ozil into the team and the absence of genuine wingers, Wenger has played with a 5-man midfield with a very high back-line.

With Flamini as the only defensively able player in mid, their defence does not have any bite ostensibly. With a system like this, teams have already tried a counter-attacking gameplay against them, but herein lies the exact importance of having so many midfieders.

With a constant harrying and hustling approach out-of-ball by the midfield, the defenders are able to concentrate on helping out their full-backs. Add to that, the industrious nature of Giroud and Ramsey, the midfield effectively begins to act like Barcelona when out of possession.

They defeated Liverpool with a similar approach which was enhanced in structure by Liverpool’s 3-man defence which lost out to the attacking runs of Sagna on the right wing.

MANCHESTER UNITED – REACTIVE APPROACH

Traditionally, Man United have relied on a counter-attacking winger based system to play against Arsenal. With Scholes and Carrick stationed deep in midfield, spraying long balls for the counterattack utilizing 2 pacy wingers and 2 strikers, it was an efficiency based approach. They would not see a lot of possession but would be lethal when they would get the chance as the better chances would always fall to them.

Currently, United simply do not have any in-form proper winger. Moyes tried the former approach against Man City and we all know what happened after. Still if he persists with this idea, then they now have a certain winger who has enough pace and trickery to carry out the counterattack from deep positions.

That certain player is the 18 year old prodigy, Adnan Januzaj. However, he has not been played in any big match till now and putting so much of the tactical pivot upon him could be too much for such a young player.

The other viable option would be a mimic 4-2-3-1 with more midfield playing players like Kagawa. Kagawa has developed a good understanding with Evra and their combination could be overwhelming for Sagna who has a tendency to concede stupid fouls.

KEY DECIDERS

Aaron Ramsey – Silencing all his critics

For Manchester United, Van Persie and Rooney would be the magic duo out whom the Reds will look for the goal. This much is obvious, but the match deciding factor will be the service providers for them. The players who will provide the passes to the strikers; if they fail, then both the strikers would be pulled back, and United would then lose any edge in the attacking department.

Arsenal on the other hand, they have only 1 issue at hand which could be seriously detrimental – fatigue. They have fielded the same side in 2 matches within a span of a week till now and the next match would most likely involve the same team with only 1 or 2 players changed at the most. Much will again depend upon Giroud who will have to put in another major shift and run as much as he can.

Whatever happens will happen, but this match will witness the end of an age-old rivalry of Wenger and Ferguson, and the start of the rivalry of Wenger and Moyes, only with the senior-junior status reversed.

K.O Time – 9.40 pm IST, Sunday