In what would come as a piece of surprising news, West Ham forward Michail Antonio has claimed Arsenal players are starting to bother a bit about Manchester City’s form.
The Gunners are four points clear at the top of the Premier League table but chasing City have a game in hand, ahead of a crunch clash between the top two sides next Wednesday.
This fixture comes at a time where City have blown opponents away in recent time and are currently on an 11-game unbeaten run, winning 10 of those games – and the only blemish coming in a 1-1 draw against Bayern Munich on Wednesday night.
In contrast, Arsenal have blown two-goal leads in successive games, playing out to a 2-2 draw against Liverpool and most recently against West Ham United.
Ahead of their clash against Southampton on Friday, Antonio says he have information that the Gunners are possibly starting to panick.
Arsenal worried about Manchester City’s form, claims Antonio
“I heard this from someone who works at Arsenal – all season they’ve been concentrating on themselves, just playing how they play, they’ve been playing so well,” Antonio said on the The Footballer’s Football Podcast.
“But last week when they drew with Liverpool and City got a bit closer it was the first time all season that this person heard [Arsenal’s] players start talking about City and how well City have been playing.”
“So they are definitely feeling the pressure from City chasing them. It’s just how they deal with it at the end of the day.”
“City are used to chasing people down and doing this. They like to do it, I think they do it on purpose, they make it difficult for themselves to chase people down.”
Antonio was also quick to dismiss claims that Arsenal are throwing away their Premier League title chance with their last two results.
“I wouldn’t say they’re bottling it,” he added.
“I said at the beginning of the season there would be a stage in January where they’d hit a blip and wouldn’t be doing as well as they did. They are probably just hitting that now.”
“But I don’t think they’re bottling it. At the end of the day they’re still four points ahead, City still have a difficult game in hand against us [West Ham].”
“It’s still a lot to play for. I wouldn’t say they’re bottling it, they’ve hit their blip, which everyone always expected them to do. They’re not hitting their blip by losing games, they’re throwing away two-goal leads.”
