“Big picture, everyone knows where we need to go, but we have to start winning matches” said Russell Martin ahead of Saturdays 3pm kick off at the Emirates. Southampton are winless in six games, and hitting the ground running against the runners up from last season would certainly shake up the Premier League table on both ends.
Arteta will undoubtedly be setting his team up to stay near the top spot. He brushed away any suggestions of the title race in his press conference on Friday, as he laughingly said its “super early, you can feel the tension already in every match”.
The style of play Southampton’s Russell applies can fall into the favour of Arsenal quite nicely if they turn up all gunners blazing. Russell has shown to be stubborn with his style of play and hasn’t tweaked it since arriving in the top-flight. Playing out of the back against a harsh presser of the ball like Arteta’s Arsenal raises many red flags.
However Arteta has regularly tweaked his starting 11 now since captain Martin Odegaard’s absence due to an ankle injury. “I think the impact with what Martin does is too big to replace with one player”.
Embed from Getty ImagesSub-edited by David
