Arsenal vs. PSG Rewatch and Preview of First Leg

Taking a deep dive into the October meeting between these two and what applies to the first leg on Tuesday

Nobody is playing better football than PSG right now after dispatching Liverpool and Aston Villa to reach the semifinals.

Now awaits the worst possible matchup the could have asked for. Arsenal beat PSG 2-0 in October during the league phase in what was PSG’s worst offensive performance of the season.

Below I am going to do a tactical analysis of that match to see what we can take from that first meeting and how it applies to the first leg.

First up, these were the lineups in that October meeting.

image via FotMob

The first obvious thing that stands out is Ousmane Dembélé didn’t play and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia had not arrived at the club yet.

For Arsenal, they basically played four centerbacks across their back line to help them win duels and be more physical than PSG. It’s also one of the few times Arteta has played a 4-4-2, which ended up being the right decision defensively.

First Half

Right off the bat, Arsenal was pressing high in a man to man fashion. They consistently were letting PSG make the initial pass out wide and then jumping them in the corner.

That is a problem for PSG because they are not a team with forwards who they can send balls over the top to.

Instead they have to try and play through this type of pressure and primarily tried to play down the left side, but Arsenal being one of the best high pressing teams in the world kept turning them over.

image via markstatsbot on X

Oftentimes when teams try to go man to man against PSG, Dembele will drop in and ask questions of whether or not a centerback is going to follow him. Arsenal consistently did have their defenders track PSG’s attackers anytime they dropped, but the pressure on the ball also made it difficult for PSG to actually pick out those passes.

Here is an example of Saliba stepping up to mark Barcola.