Wright makes title prediction after Arsenal ‘faltered’ in Man City race as trio told to ‘step up’ | OneFootball

Ian Wright has made his Premier League title prediction after Arsenal lost to Manchester City on Sunday and told three Gunners players to “step up” in the race.

Erling Haaland scored the winner in the crunch clash at the Etihad and again in the tense 1-0 win over Burnley on Wednesday, which saw Pep Guardiola’s side take top spot in the Premier League on goals scored.

Wright was downcast on the back of Arsenal’s defeat to Bournemouth but is more upbeat after the loss to City, insisting the Gunners “played well enough to win the game”.

“I was obviously very emotional last time [on the last show], I was very emotional about it. But leading into that was obviously Southampton and Bournemouth so I was reeling off of that, and it wasn’t great against Sporting,” Wright said on The Overlap.

“But I said in the last show that I just wanted to see something from us, show us that you can do something, you can give us something.

“If we’d won the game previously and done well getting to Manchester City, there’s never going to be the: it’s decided on the Manchester City game. You want to try and get that cushion so when you play that game, whatever happens, you’re okay because you’ll beat the rest.

“So leading into that and the way we played, obviously, I was disappointed. But we played well enough to win the game, we should have at least got the draw out of that game.”

Wright claims Arsenal’s lack of “ruthlessness” cost them in the title showdown.

“Watching Eze, [Martin] Odegaard and Havertz, we created the kind of chances that we should have taken. We should have taken them,” he added.

“When you watch City, they do give chances up and if you’re going to be ruthless, you take them and Arsenal could have won that game.

“Haaland had one chance, bam, took it, so I’m a lot better now because now what they’ve got to do is be ruthless with everything.”

And Wright believes Arsenal will “creep over the line” and pip City to the Premier League title.

“I’m gonna go with: we’re going to win the league,” he said when asked for his title prediction.

“The chances we created against that City side, I think we could do the same against the teams coming. Obviously we’re going to have to be a lot more ruthless with taking our chances.

“But before that, leading into that, I didn’t see us creating enough chances in the games leading into that, in a time where with the history of what we’re doing in this stage of the season, we’ve kind of faltered.

“I thought in that Man City game, the big game, we created enough chances where if we do that against other teams and get ourselves back to that defensive solidity that we had before leading into this part of the season and finish this with ruthlessness.

“We started the season with ruthlessness with people saying, ‘Oh, it’s Arsenal’s, it’s Arsenal’s to lose’, everybody was saying it, because we looked absolutely faultless in the way we were.

“Now, everybody’s faltering and in this City game I thought we did enough. if we can play like that, even if we’re trying to creep over the line, we can probably do it.”

Wright wants to see three Arsenal players with experience of winning titles to step up to the plate.

“We’ve got to find the fight,” Wright continued.

“We’ve got Piero Hincapie who has won the Bundesliga, we’ve got Gabriel Jesus and we’ve got Jurrien Timber who has won in Holland, three players who have seen it off.

“They need to step into that team and try to make them understand what it’s going to take to finish this off because everybody in there will be having doubts, there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Predicting the result of their clash with Newcastle on Saturday, Wright concluded: “We’re winning this game, either 2-0 or 3-0. I think we have [got that in us]… 3-0! We need that kind of result.”