Arsenal forward Theo Walcott has told Arsenal Player that the Gunners will need to deal with opponents Southampton’s high pressing game if they want to return to winning ways in the Premier League.
The Saints inflicted a 4-0 thrashing upon Arsenal in the reverse fixture at St. Mary’s in a miserable Boxing Day fixture. This remains Arsenal’s heaviest league defeat this season.
The England international insisted, as reported by the club’s official website, that his side must ‘put things right.
We need to be aware of their threat going forward.
How they press from the front is very good and as soon as we get past that first press, I’m sure we can cause all sorts of problems with the attacking threat we have.
We need to put this right. We haven’t won for a couple of games in the league so we need to get back to winning and make things right.
It’s going to be a tough game, as every game is, but there’s a lot on this one.
Walcott then went on to describe his relationship with new Southampton striker Charlie Austin, who will be a particular danger man Arsenal will have to deal with. The Englishman underlined his goal scoring threat with a late winner against Manchester United in his Southampton debut.
When I played for AFC Newbury at the age of 11, he played for them at the time. We had a brief spell together and then he moved to Reading to play for the academy there. Newbury were quite happy they had me as well then.
After that, we met up at Newbury district level at a tournament in Jersey and then I got picked up from Southampton and went my separate way.
Everyone knows the rest of the story but we scored a lot of goals together. We worked quite well together.
After three successive Premier League games without a victory only a win against Southampton can possibly bring Arsenal back to the top of the Premier League table.
