Speaking on Sky Sports News, the former player believes the title race could be over for Arsenal if they lose against Liverpool, concluding that the ground they will have to make up to Manchester City and their opponents may be too much. “This is a huge football match,” he began.
“I’ll go as far to say that if they get beat then I think they are out of it. I know people will say ‘oh there’s 29 games left’ they are going to be six and seven points behind Manchester City and Liverpool - these teams don’t look like they are going to get beat by the lesser teams, the gulf is too big.
“You’re talking Bukayo Saka, Martin Odegaard, William Saliba, they are big players and if they don’t play then I don’t see a better opportunity than this for Liverpool if they aren’t fit.”
Riccardo Calafiori is also likely to be absent after suffering a knee injury in their Champions League win during the week. Odegaard, Saka and Jurrien Timber are all doubts but, despite that, Mikel Arteta was defiant and sent Liverpool a warning ahead of their game this weekend after their mid-week win. “Well, we played two nights ago with players coming from internationals after flying from Brazil and many countries. I was expecting a bit of a drop off.
“And the fact that we put so much in the first half and didn’t get the distance in terms of the scoreline, I think we paid a bit for that. Then we made life more difficult for us because we started give the ball away in not the right areas and then it was more open. That didn’t help. But we have now four days. Believe me, come Sunday we’ll be flying. We’ll review, have a day off, then two days to prepare the game. Sunday is far and we are more than comfortable that we’ll be in the right place.”
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