On Wednesday, Arsenal’s first match in Group B of the Champions League will be at home against PSV Eindhoven.
Both Arsenal and PSV are playing in the UEFA Champions League for the first time since leaving the tournament.
Six long years have passed since the Gunners last played in Europe’s best club competition, but a great season in 2021/22 helped Mikel Arteta’s team qualify for the long-awaited Champions League. This helped ease the pain of losing the title to Manchester City.
PSV is also back in the big leagues after being away for four years. Since their last trip to the Champions League, they have had six different head coaches, including managers, and have finished second in the Eredivisie four times and dropped out of the league once. During that time, the Dutch team was knocked out of the qualifiers three times. In August, they beat the Rangers to get back to the group stage.
This will be PSV’s 17th time in the league. From 1998 to 2017, Arsenal played in the Champions League for 19 straight years.
Arsenal and PSV have played each other before in the Europa League, but PSV has changed a lot since the last time they played Mikel Arteta’s team.
Peter Bosz is now in charge, and Eindhoven is already seeing how his ideas differ from those of others. They are at the top of the Eredivisie with four wins out of four, but Arsenal has also had a good start to the season, which continued on Sunday with a win at Everton.
There is a lot of energy on the red side of north London, and when PSV comes to play at the Emirates, fans will be celebrating the return of the Champions League to the stadium.
But Bosz’s team won’t make things easy for the Gunners. Their fast-paced style will give Arteta’s players something to think about. PSV is a more exciting team than it was last season, and Bosz won’t change the ideas that have helped them do well so far.
Prediction: This would be a great game, definitely more exciting than the two times they played each other last season, with Arsenal’s attack finally hitting against a brave PSV defense. There will be goals, and the Gunners will end up on the winning side.