West Ham forward Michail Antonio has revealed that an Arsenal insider has told him that Mikel Arteta’s players are starting to become concerned by Manchester City’s form in the title race. City are currently four points behind Arsenal, but have a game in hand and have won their last six league games in a row. Antonio believes that this is causing the Gunners to become aware of City’s impressive run of results.
He said on The Footballer’s Football Podcast: ‘I heard this from someone who works at Arsenal – all season they’ve been concentrating on themselves, just playing how they play, they’ve been playing so well. But last week when they drew with Liverpool and City got a bit closer it was the first time all season that this person heard [Arsenal’s] players start talking about City and how well City have been playing. So they are definitely feeling the pressure from City chasing them. It’s just how they deal with it at the end of the day.’
Antonio also dismissed accusations that Arsenal are throwing away their Premier League title chance with their last two results. He said: ‘I wouldn’t say they’re bottling it. I said at the beginning of the season there would be a stage in January where they’d hit a blip and wouldn’t be doing as well as they did. They are probably just hitting that now. But I don’t think they’re bottling it. At the end of the day they’re still four points ahead, City still have a difficult game in hand against us [West Ham]. It’s still a lot to play for. I wouldn’t say they’re bottling it, they’ve hit their blip, which everyone always expected them to do. They’re not hitting their blip by losing games, they’re throwing away two-goal leads.’
Antonio played 88 minutes in West Ham’s 2-2 draw with Arsenal and claims that the Gunners’ movement and patterns of play were ‘unbelievable’. He said: ‘Basically what Arteta has done he’s been at City, watched everything Pep has done, he’s moved away to Arsenal and he’s copied and pasted at Arsenal. I’m not caning Arteta, the skills to actually do what you’re doing, study it, come [to Arsenal] then actually pull it off, even though the guy [Pep] who has mastered it is there and you’re beating him at doing his own thing, it’s unbelievable. The craziest thing is, how they’re doing it, I was watching the game and I was like, ‘if I shut my eyes this could be City’. It’s exactly how they play, they had the wingers wide, midfielder’s in the two No.10s, they had the striker coming deep, Jesus was picking it up at No.6. It was a mess, you can’t stay in your shape. They move you out of your shape, it’s unbelievable. You saw it with the first goal, even with the second you see Odegaard running far stick but Saka’s run Cresswell in, so he’s gone inside, Odegaard’s run off the back of Cress because there’s an extra man there, so people are saying Cress left his man – he didn’t – because Cress had somebody, Odegaard was just a spare man because they’re just everywhere. The quality is unbelievable. I rate them, I actually want them to win the league, I actually do. I’ve got a few friends at City but I would actually like to see them win the league, it’s something new, something fresh.’