Arsenal 'quite a cynical team' but 'that's what you need'

Rory Smith from The New York Times, speaking about Arsenal on BBC Radio 5 Live's Monday Night Club: "There's a degree to which they are a much more, and I say this as a compliment, a cynical team. That's what you need to be successful and I'm not sure that's always picked up.

"You think of Mikel Arteta as very sophisticated. He speaks multiple languages and trained under Pep Guardiola as a coach. They've got lots of wonderful footballers and really attack-minded players.

"But they are very controlled. They are extremely good at shutting games down as we saw on Sunday because for all the possession City had in that second half, there were an awful lot of shots from defenders.

"I'm imagining that Pep Guardiola's plan for the second half was not 'let's see if Ruben Dias can score.' It feels like something that he maybe did not want to happen but Arsenal shut that down absolutely brilliantly.

"We talked about Gabriel and William Saliba last week as potentially the best central defensive partnership in Europe, but the whole team is very good at shutting space down and basically stopping games happening.

"I'm not sure that side of Arsenal is necessarily appreciated as much as it should be."

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