Arsenal will face PSG on Tuesday night at the Emirates for their second match of the 2024/25 Champions League season, and while a game on paper against the 2023/24 UCL semifinalists figures to be a tough one, it would honestly be a profound disappointment for the Gunners to lose.
PSG are first in Ligue 1 but tied on points with Monaco, reeling after losing Kylian Mbappe. They do have some bright spots, such as new signing Joao Neves and young winger Bradley Barcola, but they don’t look like Champions League contenders without Mbappe.
Meanwhile, Arsenal are fighting tooth and nail to finally win the Premier League, and, in doing so, are Champions League hopefuls in their own rights. A strong showing at home against PSG on Matchday 2 would go a long way in validating their legitimacy as contenders.
Thanks to PSG manager Luis Enrique, Arsenal won’t have to face PSG’s best player in the XI, because the unorthodox manager won’t be playing Ousmane Dembele as a healthy scratch after squabbling with his ultra-talented winger.
The dispute began, as all Enrique disputes do, when the manager subbed off his star man against Rennes and then failed to have any capacity to discuss the manner calmly, instead creating a potential future problem. (Remember when he pulled the same rubbish on Mbappe last season?)
Arsenal won’t care about Enrique’s incompetence, because it will make Arsenal’s elite back four that much less worried about a PSG attack that could be completely toothless without Dembele’s four goals and three assists in six appearances (four starts) as Ligue 1’s highest-rated player per WhoScored.
Luis Enrique hasn’t done anything remotely praiseworthy in world football since MSN gave him a name in Barcelona, so Mikel Arteta will accept nothing less than his man running in circles around the circus that is QS- I mean, PSG.
The managing editor of The Trivela Effect, Kevin has 15 years of experience in digital media. He covered Real Madrid from 2019-2022 for The Real Champs as a site manager. His work has been featured in ESPN, Bleacher Report, Yahoo! Sports, NBC Sports, and other major outlets. You can contact him at the site’s official Twitter handle @TrivelaEffect or via the site’s official email thetrivelaeffect@gmail.com.