'It's not very complicated' – Bodo/Glimt manager claims he's sussed out Arsenal

Bodo/Glimt manager Kjetil Knutsen has praised Arsenal’s style of play but claims he has worked out their approach and ‘is not worried’ about stopping the Gunners on Thursday night.

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Arsenal take on the Norwegian side at the Emirates in their second Europa League group stage match, with their clash against PSV Eindhoven having been postponed following the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

On the same day Her Majesty passed away, Arsenal were in Switzerland to face FC Zurich and Knutsen says he was blown away by the patterns of play he saw from Mikel Arteta’s side in that match.

However, after watching more of the Gunners, he believes he has worked out how to stop them and says Tottenham took the completely wrong approach when they set up to counter in the north London derby.

Knutsen explained: ‘I started watching Arsenal against Zurich to analyse Zurich, but my concentration and my gaze went towards Arsenal because I was thinking, “What the hell are they actually doing?!”

‘There are a lot of rotations, so you have to pick them apart and see where are the players who are fairly stable in their role and where are the players who rotate a lot.

‘It’s just extremely high-level, high-intensity football with extremely high-level individual qualities.’

He continued: ‘But when you get to see it over time, it’s not very complicated.

‘They have a number of rotations with the left-back and central midfielder, who has a lot of freedom, but it’s a lot less on their right side.

‘But the way we defend, it doesn’t matter too much [which opposition] players run where because we are very zone-orientated in the way we defend.

‘If we played a man-to-man system we would have a huge challenge to face, but we are at the other end of the scale [in terms of approach] so that’s probably the least of my worries.’

He added: ‘They attack with a lot of people, they’re patient and then suddenly they have that burst in the final third.

‘But they also leave space in behind them which we will have to exploit. We need to be aggressive in the low block, high intensity in the high press, and we will have to control the ball. Tottenham only defended, Zurich only defended – if you do that you won’t stand a chance against them.’

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