Pick Your Arsenal Team To Play Barcelona

I see your reasoning, but unfortunately Diaby is out and Wenger won't play Denilson. Eboue is Available but he is the Sub for Song or Sagna. Wilshere and Song will have to fight to get the ball as best as they can. Arshavin/Nasri, Walcott and Fabregas will at least try to get back and help them both. Now, Arsenal trying to play more defensively is absurd for the way they know how to play. Playing in a way that they don't know how to play is for me more dangerous.

... a team shouldn't play the way it isn't used to playing. Arsenal is at it's best when they can go for the attack.

However, Arsenal's defensive midfield is absolutely lacking when you're playing against a team/midfield like Barca, especially if you play like Arsenal did a year ago, when they also wanted to play their own game and it was just a collection of defensive errors.

So if you want to stand a chance, you'll need to shut down Barca's midfield and be on their ass 100% of the time, catch the ball early, and quickly hit them with a throughpass by Van Persie or Fabregas on Walcott. That SHOULD keep the field between Barca's defense and midfield stretched, making it much easier to shut down their build-up.