Ian Wright has backed Arsenal to pick themselves up from their crushing defeat to Manchester City and win the Premier League title this season.
The Gunners found themselves in an imperious position in the title race earlier this month, knowing victory over Bournemouth would have opened up a 12-point lead at the top of the table.
But the Cherries stunned Arsenal to run out 2-1 winners at the Emirates, piling even more pressure on Mikel Arteta’s men ahead of last weekend’s potentially pivotal trip to the Etihad.
A moment of brilliance from Rayan Cherki ensured Arsenal got off to the worst possible start in Manchester, but the visitors found an immediate response through Kai Havertz at the other end of the pitch – gifted to them by Gianluigi Donnarumma.
City rallied again, though, with Erling Haaland scoring what proved to be the winner in the 65th minute, while Eberechi Eze hit the woodwork and Havertz squandered two golden chances in a pulsating second half.
Pep Guardiola’s side followed this up by beating a down-and-out Burnley team on Wednesday night, a result that saw the club leapfrog Arsenal and go top – on goal difference – for the first time since the opening week of the campaign.
Giving his thoughts on the latest episode of The Overlap, Wright outlined the positives has has taken from Arsenal’s setback, now that the dust has settled.
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‘I was obviously very emotional last time [on the last show], I was very emotional about it. But leading into that was obviously Southampton and Bournemouth so I was reeling off of that, and it wasn’t great against Sporting,’ the ex-Arsenal and England striker said.
‘But I said in the last show that I just wanted to see something from us, show us that you can do something, you can give us something.
‘If we’d won the game previously and done well getting to Manchester City, there’s never going to be the: it’s decided on the Manchester City game. You want to try and get that cushion so when you play that game, whatever happens, you’re okay because you’ll beat the rest.
‘So leading into that and the way we played, obviously, I was disappointed. But we played well enough to win the game, we should have at least got the draw out of that game.’
Wright felt Arsenal were ultimately punished by their lack of ‘ruthlessness’ in front of goal in Sunday’s top-of-the-table showdown.
‘Watching Eze, [Martin] Odegaard and Havertz, we created the kind of chances that we should have taken. We should have taken them,’ he added.
‘When you watch City, they do give chances up and if you’re going to be ruthless, you take them and Arsenal could have won that game.
‘Haaland had one chance, bam, took it, so I’m a lot better now because now what they’ve got to do is be ruthless with everything.’
Based on what he saw in the performance against City, Wright is hopeful Arsenal will have enough to win the title, even if it is a case of ‘creeping over the line’.
‘I’m gonna go with: we’re going to win the league,’ he replied when asked for his title prediction.
‘The chances we created against that City side, I think we could do the same against the teams coming. Obviously we’re going to have to be a lot more ruthless with taking our chances.
‘But before that, leading into that, I didn’t see us creating enough chances in the games leading into that, in a time where with the history of what we’re doing in this stage of the season, we’ve kind of faltered.
‘I thought in that Man City game, the big game, we created enough chances where if we do that against other teams and get ourselves back to that defensive solidity that we had before leading into this part of the season and finish this with ruthlessness.
‘We started the season with ruthlessness with people saying, “Oh, it’s Arsenal’s, it’s Arsenal’s to lose”, everybody was saying it, because we looked absolutely faultless in the way we were.
‘Now, everybody’s faltering and in this City game I thought we did enough. if we can play like that, even if we’re trying to creep over the line, we can probably do it.’
Wright called on those players with experience of winning major titles to step up and drag the rest of the squad back on track after what will have been a difficult few days.
‘We’ve got to find the fight,’ Wright, Arsenal’s second-highest goalscorer in history, continued.
‘We’ve got Piero Hincapie who has won the Bundesliga, we’ve got Gabriel Jesus and we’ve got Jurrien Timber who has won in Holland, three players who have seen it off.
‘They need to step into that team and try to make them understand what it’s going to take to finish this off because everybody in there will be having doubts, there’s nothing wrong with that.’
Looking ahead to this weekend’s action, Wright backed his beloved club to come away from their clash with Newcastle with all three points.
‘We’re winning this game, either 2-0 or 3-0,’ he said.
‘I think we have [got that in us]… 3-0! We need that kind of result.’
Who will win the Premier League title this season?
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Arsenal
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Manchester City
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