Thierry Henry has warned Mikel Arteta that Arsenal cannot afford a repeat of their performance against Sporting CP in their Premier League match against Manchester City on Sunday.
Arsenal have secured their place in the Champions League semi-final where they will meet Atletico Madrid following a goalless draw at home to Sporting on Wednesday night.
But the Gunners, who had a 1-0 win from the first leg in Portugal last week, delivered another unconvincing performance as they registered just one shot on target against Sporting in the return fixture at the Emirates Stadium.
Arsenal now turn their attention to the Premier League this weekend as they play City at the Etihad Stadium in a game which will have a significant impact on the title race.
Arteta’s side currently sit six points clear of City at the top of the Premier League but Pep Guardiola’s side have a game in hand and will cut that lead to three points with a win.
‘I want to see that fire at the Etihad,’ Henry told CBS Sports.
‘That’s what I want to see, it’s easy to talk, go there, at Man City, and deliver.
‘I believe in what I see though, I believe in him Arteta, ‘the fire’, but when you talk like that you have to do it then. I didn’t see that tonight.
‘We are through, so happy, semi-final, I never won it, but I won the league though, go and win at Man City, I want to see that fire there, I believe Mikel, yes, but show it.’
Asked how he would approach the game against City, Henry replied: ‘Not like tonight, or against Bournemouth, or Brighton away, or Mansfield, or everything that I’ve seen this season.’
Asked if the performance against Sporting would be enough to beat City, Henry laughed and replied: ‘The Man City I’ve seen recently? We’re talking about the team that won four in a row, Liverpool came in between that if not it would have been more.
‘I do believe, I’ve been saying since the beginning of the season, this year I do believe we can win the league, this is the biggest chance in your life just to prove to yourself, as a team, that we can.
‘And then people will not talk about the word they want to use that I do not want to use.
‘I do believe personally but I am sitting in a chair for CBS, there’s nothing I can do. Now I heard ‘fire’, I want to see that fire at the Etihad.
‘If you have the face of Declan Rice go back to that, at the end of the game I stayed with his face, you had a lot of guys smiling but his face… I don’t know, maybe I need to speak to him to know what he had in his head. This is a guy who just went through to the semi-final of the Champions League.
‘There’s no positive or negative here. We are in a semi-final of a Champions League, well done, that didn’t happen a lot in history so obviously I’m over the moon. But City… I want the team to win there, not draw, statement.’
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