Bodo/Glimt manager Kjetil Knutsen claims that he has worked out how to stop Arsenal playing, despite being impressed with their style of football.
The Norwegian outfit head to The Emirates on Thursday evening for a Europa League group-stage clash, trying to stop a Gunners side who currently sit top of the Premier Lague table.
Arsenal will be playing just their second European fixture after their clash with PSV was postponed after the passing of Queen Elizabeth II.
However, on the same day as the monarch’s death, Arsenal took on FC Zurich in Switzerland. And Knutsen admits to being hugely impressed by what he saw from Mikel Arteta’s men in that game.
But after watching more film on Thursday night’s opponents, Knutsen is confident he has their number.
Indeed, he believes Tottenham got it badly wrong in the north London derby.
Speaking ahead of the game, 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.”
Knutsen confident of stopping Arsenal
“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.
“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.”
Thursday’s Emirates clash kicks-off at 8pm, with Arsenal looking to leapfrog the Norwegian side in the table with a win.