Alan Shearer Exclusive: Arsenal can come out on top against PSG but it will be tight | OneFootball

Alan Shearer

Alan believes Arsenal can win the Champions League

Betfair ambassador Alan Shearer provides his exclusive views on this week's Champions League semi-final first legs and says the wide battle will be key in Arsenal v Paris Saint-Germain...

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Arsenal can learn from Aston Villa against PSG

Arsenal will have the firm belief now within the football club that they can win the Champions League, and so they should after their performance against Real Madrid.

If you go through every club that's left in the competition, whether that's PSG, Barcelona or Inter. There's an argument for all four clubs as to how they could win it.

Arsenal will look at how they dismantled Real Madrid home and away. That should give them huge belief to think they can do the same against PSG.

What I'm sure they'll look at is how Aston Villa had a right pop at PSG, especially in the second-half, and were really successful in scoring their goals when they went after them, there was a real contrast between first and second-half.

Wide battles will be key in Arsenal v PSG

PSG have probably got two of the best full-backs in the world in Nuno Mendes and Achraf Hakimi.

There are so many key areas where different battles will be won or lost. We saw Mendes against Mo Salah in the round of 16 and now we're about to see Mendes against Bukayo Saka. Both players are in incredible form, but Mendes stopped Salah.

The other key battles are in midfield. Thomas Partey is not going to play in the first leg so it's going to be interesting to see how Arsenal get around that. They played Mikel Merino deeper in midfield against Ipswich and Leandro Trossard down the middle, which is how I suspect they might go.

There are so many key battles, but both clubs will have a huge belief that they can win this competition. From an Arsenal point of view, if they can attack the game like they did against Real Madrid at home, then they'll come out on top.

However, I don't expect Arsenal will get anywhere near the same result against PSG as they did in the first leg against Real Madrid. This semi-final will be a lot tighter.

That being said, we thought that the Real Madrid game was going to be really tight and Arsenal got through, not with ease, but they absolutely battered Real Madrid over two games.

PSG have got some really talented players but Arsenal have been really tight in terms of their defence the whole way through.

I commentated on the group stage win for Arsenal in October and PSG were a very different team then. Ousmane Dembele was left out for disciplinary reasons then and Arsenal cruised to a win.

I suspect this match will be very different.

Barcelona against Inter will be another great semi-final

Inter Milan are really tight at the back, but deadly up front with Lautaro Martinez. If there is any team who can get over that high line which Barcelona play, then it might be Inter.

The La Liga side play the highest of high-lines, so it's going to be fascinating to see if the Italians can get around that.

With the talent that Barcelona have, they'll think that they can outscore Inter Milan, so it's two great ties.