Arsenal have been knocked out of the Europa League meaning it’s nearly impossible for them to now move back into the Champions League next season.
Much like the previous campaign, Arsenal had been looking at the Europa League as a realistic option to get back into the top-tier but it was Greek side Olympiacos who crushed their hopes.
The Gunners went out in the Round of 32 on the basis of away goals after the two-legged tie ended 2-2.
And now talking about the win against the North London club, Olympiacos manager Pedro Martins has explained how he focused on a particular weak spot of Arsenal in order to try and knock them out.
The Olympiakos manager told The Athletic, via Express: “Set-pieces are always important.
“In this kind of match, you must be efficient when you have a chance. We watched many games and we almost saw the weakness.
“Most importantly, we saw what is standard in how the team operates… against that weakness, we tried to work our plan.
“We’ve scored a lot from set pieces. We work on it a lot. In these situations, we have players with big quality like [Mathieu] Valbuena and Giorgos [Masouras].
“They deliver the ball well and then after, we have Cisse, (Ousseynou) Ba, (Ruben) Semedo or Youssef — they are strong in the area.
“Attack the space and don’t hit the ball too fast.”
Arsenal need to rectify their defence – asap:
While Mikel Arteta has been able to stabilise the attacking and the midfield areas of his side but the defence looks as shaky as it did during the time of Unai Emery.
The new boss had lost the services of Calum Chambers for the remainder of the season and the likes of Mustafi and David Luiz have done very little to impress anyone.
While Arteta has managed to bring in someone like Pablo Mari in January and at first glance, the player looks really solid. But unfortunately, this signing might have come at a very ceasing time and now the only thing for the manager to do is to wait for the summer transfer window in order to try and overhaul his backline.
