- Nico O’Reilly has praised Arsenal’s set-piece abilities
- He thinks Man City coped well last time the teams faced off
- O’Reilly has called on his team to do so again in the League Cup final.
Nico O’Reilly has outlined one of Arsenal’s key strengths, which Manchester City will have to work hard to prevent.
Arsenal have done well in attack this season. In fact, there are no other teams to have scored as many Premier League goals.
However, take away goals from set-pieces and this would no longer be the case, with many of Arsenal’s scores having come from corner kicks.
This already seems to be weighing on the minds of Man City. Pep Guardiola spoke about Arsenal’s set-piece tactics earlier in the month and now Nico O’Reilly has had his say on the topic.
Nico O’Reilly calls on Man City to prepare well for Arsenal’s set-pieces
Mikel Arteta’s team have received a lot of praise from O’Reilly for how dangerous they can be at set-pieces, with corners in particular being used as a threat.
Despite this, he believes Man City coped well in this area when the teams met earlier in the season and he is aiming for this to be the case again.
O’Reilly told The Telegraph: “It’s a strong point in their team. They use them very well. We need to prepare for it. We did it in the game when we went to their place. I thought we were very good then. We just need to prepare for it well and stop them as much as possible.
“They’re very good at set-pieces, they’re aggressive. They have good takers. When it’s a corner, we don’t want to be in those situations because we know how good they are but we’ll need to deal with it and prepare well.
“We have some good people on the staff here who specialise in those situations.”
Man City need their own threat
Arsenal are very much known as the set-piece team and Man City need to come up with something of their own in order to strike fear into the heart of their opponent.
City’s attacking displays have been mixed this season. At times they have been electric, but recently this has rarely been the case.
Beating Arsenal is not just about defending set-pieces, but creating chances and being clinical up front. If the ball never makes it as a far as Erling Haaland, that is a big problem.
