In his latest exclusive Betway blog, our global ambassador discusses Arsenal's start to the season, Barcelona's electric form and how Bradley Barcola can adapt to the Premier League.
Arsenal started the season strongly before their 3-0 defeat away at Brighton. Do you write that result off as a bad day at the office, or are you concerned about the performance?
Time will tell if it was an anomaly, but now there is international duty, so we will not know for a little while. That’s the worst part of the international break – you can’t rectify a defeat straight away. You sit with that 3-0, and everybody is going to talk about it.
That hasn’t happened to an Arsenal team in the league under Mikel Arteta for a very long time, so you would like to think that it might be an anomaly, but they must prove it.
People have been talking about the free-flowing Arsenal since the beginning of season, but I saw us win very tight games away from home. If a team couldn’t open us up, we could score that one goal to win the game. Brighton did something that not a lot of teams have done, though. They opened us up, so fair play to them.
The game at Brighton last year was the same. It was a one-sided game, Bukayo Saka scored a deflected goal against the run of play, and we had 42 per cent possession. The difference is that last year Raya was bailing us out, and the defence was strong. This time, the team didn’t defend well as a unit and Raya wasn’t bailing us out. That didn’t happen this time.
Now, you have to move on and try to rectify it. It’s still early in the season, and I can remember Manchester United losing 5-0 to Chelsea in 1999. That didn’t stop them from winning the league.
We’ve seen teams like Brighton, Brentford, Hull and Leeds take points of the ‘Big Six’ this year. Is it good for the Premier League to see those clubs competing at the top of the table?
It’s normal now. Brighton and Brentford have done some great things recently, Leeds finished last season really well and have continued to do so. The only team you can be surprised about is Hull, who have arrived in the Premier League like Sunderland did last year. Again, in my time Ipswich finished fifth and Sunderland finished seventh one year, so you always have a team who will surprise you.
For the neutral, it’s great because at one point everyone thought Arsenal were going to run away with it, as Chelsea, Man City and Liverpool were teams with new players and new coaches. Suddenly it’s the international break and Arsenal are three points behind Man City.
I think for the neutral, you want to see big games every weekend, battles, and teams performing who maybe you were not expecting to do well. That’s great to see.
Myles Lewis-Skelly has made a strong start to the season for Arsenal and has been selected in the England squad. How important was it for Arsenal to keep him in the summer?
It’s vital. As Arsenal fan, we like to see Bukayo Saka, Myles Lewis-Skelly, Max Dowman – and the list goes on – coming through and playing for Arsenal Football Club. It’s very important. Along the way you’re of course going to go and buy players, but it’s always good to see successful academy players coming through and playing for Arsenal, otherwise what’s the point having an academy?
It’s not just because Lewis-Skelly is from the academy, though, it’s because he’s performing and he helped us last year when it mattered. When Mikel dropped him into midfield, he answered the call right away. He has carried on doing what he’s doing, and you reward that performance. He’s playing regularly and now he has been selected to hopefully go and play for England. That’s all you can wish for.
Have you been impressed by how Christos Tzolis has quickly settled into the Arsenal team?
Yes, I’ve been following him for a long time since he was playing for Club Brugge. He’s a very neat team player, he works hard, he’s not shy to be on the ball, he has an eye for a pass, and when he cuts back inside he can he can give you a couple of assists, as we’ve seen already. He hit the ground running straight away.
It does help when you arrive and you’re maybe the only attacking player arriving in a team that’s already working, compared with if there are four or five new players and a new manager.
You can see that he’s still struggling away from home. He has to understand what’s happening when you play the away in the Premier League, especially as we saw in that Villa game. But that’s normal. Overall, I think he has done well.
Liverpool spent big to bring Bradley Barcola to Anfield. Do you see him as someone who can become one of the best wingers in the world?
It depends, because people forget that the tactic, the team and how you play matters. You can see that everyone who comes into Luis Enrique’s system shines – Kvaratskhelia, Dembele, Doue, Barcola.
It’s not always easy when you’re used to a certain system and a way of playing, where everybody knows what’s happening at any time. He just arrived in Liverpool, he doesn’t speak English, and it’s a different style of play with different intensity in the league.
I had to deal with it the same way, and then that little switch happened and I was more comfortable. You start to speak English, you can joke around in the dressing room, you’re a bit less shy and people start to know what you’re about.
It’s not an easy place to start, and he didn’t ask for his price tag, but it’s on his back. We all know that one-v-one, he is deadly, and he has pace. The only thing he needs to work on is his finishing, but that’s normal. If you see my finishing when I was 19 or 20 compared to the end of my career, it was so different. I became so much more sure about my game.
With winning the Champions League back-to-back, playing for France, with the price tag and the quality that he has, people are not going to wait for him to become the finished article, so he’s going to have to deliver. There is going to be a level of expectation, and sometimes he is a bit raw in his finishing, but he creates a hell of a lot.
Jeremy Jacquet only played 37 games in Ligue 1 before moving to Liverpool. How high is his reputation in France?
It’s always been very high. When I was the coach of the under-21s I wanted to call him up, he was only 16 or 17, but he didn’t come because he had to take his exams. As much as he is concentrated on football, he was also concentrated on getting his degrees. He’s very on-point in his head, and his family knows what he needs to do and how he can be successful.
People told me that he has always been seen as ‘the guy’, but it doesn’t always work that way. Many times I’ve seen players who were ‘the guy’ at that age turn out not to be the guy, while sometimes it does go the other way.
You can see that he already understands what he needs to do, especially in the physical part of the game. It also helps if you play alongside Virgil. But am I surprised with him dealing with the level of expectation? No, not really, because he was always in that situation in the youth system in France.
Barcelona are coming off two consecutive title wins and have looked the most dominant team in Europe so far this season. How high will the pressure be on them to win the Champions League?
Well, in eight games since the beginning of the season they have scored 36 goals and conceded eight. It’s ridiculous what they are doing.
At any big club, you have to win everything. That’s the goal at the beginning of the season. It’s not a choice – you go for everything, and you see what you can get. But yes, there’s a raised level of expectation when it looks like a year where you’re about to be good.
When you win at Barcelona, the town is buzzing and the team is buzzing. That place flies. It’s just such a great thing to be part of.
For me, it’s not so much about the goals they’re scoring, it’s the way they control the counter a bit better. They don’t allow the opposition to be in the game so much. They look like they mean business. It’s only the beginning, with the way Lamine Yamal and Raphinha are at the minute, if they have two guys playing like that, it is scary.
Barcelona were knocked out of the Champions League in the past two years after leaking goals at the back. Do you see a change in style to be more solid this season?
They didn’t change their style, they just have a player who has helped to get the balance of the team right. It’s not all about Rodri – you defend as a team, you attack as a team, and you control the tempo of the game as a team – but they were missing a piece. The puzzle is now complete.
Heading into the international break, what are you hoping to see from France in this cycle leading up to Euro 2028?
The only thing for France now is the goal for everybody – how can you beat Spain? Unfortunately for us, they were the team that stopped us going to the final of Euro 2024, the team that stopped us going to the final of the World Cup, and the team that stopped my team from winning the Olympic Games. So that’s the goal for the whole world – how do you beat Spain?
Visit Betway’s football betting page.
