Last Saturday Manchester City gave a perfect example of how not to play against Leicester City. It was a complacent, arrogant performance, which showed no respect for why Leicester are top of the Premier League. They played into the opposition’s hands, were lured into their traps, and deserved to lose 3-1.

The big question this weekend is whether Arsenal will avoid the same mistakes at the Emirates Stadium? Will they change their game to make themselves less vulnerable to Leicester’s threat on the break? After seeing how they adapted their style and won 5-2 at the King Power Stadium in September, I think they might.

Anyone who has seen Leicester this year knows how they play. It is the same approach whether at home or away. They don’t dominate possession. They concede the wide areas to the opposition, defending deep and narrow. They lure both opposition full-backs all the way up the pitch. Then when they win the ball back, they attack down the opposition’s sides, into the space abandoned by the full-backs. They are brilliant at it and that is why they are top.

It is just baffling to me that City took none of that into account against Leicester last Saturday. Aleksandar Kolarov and Pablo Zabaleta pushed so far up the pitch, and at the same time. This was exactly what I warned City against in this column last week. You can see their average positions on the graphic (below), which are ridiculous. This left City’s two centre-backs, Nicolas Otamendi and Martin Demichelis, completely stuck on their own and isolated. Leicester attacked down the sides and won.

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There was an element of snobbery in City’s display, as there has been from many teams against Leicester this season. They just wanted to play expansive football with no concern for what makes the Foxes so effective. So many teams have got lured up-field by Leicester and then hit by the sucker punch. They forget that you are never more vulnerable against Claudio Ranieri’s team than when you are attacking them and pushing your full-backs on.

I would have expected the Arsenal team of two or three years ago to go in blind and get beaten in exactly that way by Leicester. They were a side who always wanted to play expansive football, never adapting their approach for the opposition. But there is a new pragmatism to Arsenal’s play this season, as they showed when they played so patiently in that 3-0 win at Watford in October.

When they went to Leicester in late September, Arsenal played in a way that few expected. Rather than pushing both full-backs up all the time, they took it in turns. As you can see from the average-position graphic (below), Nacho Monreal has not gone too far away from Laurent Koscielny. Hector Bellerin pushed up further, but even he was not quite as far advanced as Zabaleta was for City, and Bellerin has the pace to get back.

What this meant is that when Leicester broke, Arsenal always had a back three – two centre-backs and one full-back – who could defend across the width of the pitch, protecting them against Leicester’s counter-attacks. They won the game 5-2.

The fact is that the sides who have had the most success this season against Leicester are those who have studied how they play, showed them respect and matched them up. That is how Liverpool beat them 1-0 at Anfield on Boxing Day. Or how Bournemouth drew 0-0, despite having 10 men. Watford play in a similar style and were only narrowly beaten.

So it is clear what Arsenal have to do to beat Leicester tomorrow - just a repeat of September. Of course, that was at the King Power, but Leicester play the same way whether they are home or away. Opponents have to find the same answers.

This means that Arsenal have to stay patient, even if they have not scored an early goal. The crowd may get on them but they cannot afford to get too desperate and throw men forward later in the game. Leicester are the fittest team in the league and have won so many games at the death.

The 23 best players under the age of 23 Show all 23 1 /23 The 23 best players under the age of 23 The 23 best players under the age of 23 1: Paul Pogba, Juventus How is it that Paul Pogba is still only 22 years of age? The Frenchman seems to have been one of the most exciting talents in European football for the best part of a decade now, and as the years have gone on, the field of contenders has only shrunk to leave the Juventus midfielder at the top of the pile, ready to battle with the likes of Neymar for Lionel Messi’s crown as world’s next best player. Squawka The 23 best players under the age of 23 2: Raphael Varane, Real Madrid As spectators we are more fascinated with creativity than its antithesis, and thus our gaze fixates on attackers far more readily than those designated to stunt productivity, and so the biggest compliment one can pay to Raphael Varane – a potential genius in his field, a man whose speed, intelligence and composure are terrifyingly well-refined for a 22-year-old – is that you always notice his influence. Squawka The 23 best players under the age of 23 3: Raheem Sterling, Manchester City In July 2015, the most inevitable transfer saga in English football finally reached its conclusion as Raheem Sterling moved to Manchester City from Liverpool for a British record fee of £44 million. Depending on his future achievements in Blue, that figure could still rise by another £5m in the years to come. Squawka The 23 best players under the age of 23 4: Paul Dybala, Juventus Paulo Dybala arrived at Juventus with and immense weight on his shoulders. The £22.4 million fee paid to seal his signature made him the fourth most expensive player in the Bianconeri’s illustrious history, behind legends such as Gianluigi Buffon, Lilian Thuram and Pavel Nedved. Add-ons could push him further up that list. Additionally, as if that pressure wasn’t enough, he was tasked with succeeding Carlos Tevez. Squawka The 23 best players under the age of 23 5: Harry Kane, Tottenham Hotspur Ridgeway Rovers are an amateur football club able to boast some of the grandest associations in the game. David Beckham once honed his skills and practised his free kicks in their colours as a youngster and more recently players including Andros Townsend and Jordan Rhodes have featured for them on the muddy turf pitches of Chingford, east London. It was also the club at which Harry Kane’s love affair with the beautiful game began to take hold and where his early promise was first recognised by the scouts of a Premier League side. They weren’t talent spotters working on behalf of Tottenham Hotspur, however, but agents from the other side of the north London divide: Arsenal. Squawka The 23 best players under the age of 23 6: Romelu Lukaku, Everton Robbie Fowler, Michael Owen, Wayne Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo and Romelu Lukaku have all managed to score 50 Premier League goal before turning 23. The Belgian international is still some way off from matching the exploits of the other members of this exclusive club but the mere fact that he belongs in such company is vindication for the scouts from Belgian Pro League side Lierse SK who, in 2004, snapped him up from his local team Rupel Boom; a club he joined at the tender age of five. Squawka The 23 best players under the age of 23 7: Jose Gimenez, Atletico Madrid September 10 2013 was a special day for Jose Gimenez, so much so that he had the date tattooed onto his arm. Aged just 18, he made his Uruguay debut in front of 55,000 people. His country needed a win against Colombia to keep up any hope of qualifying for the 2014 World Cup and the youngster would have to deal with none other than a then in-his-prime Radamel Falcao, which he did so brilliantly. Squawka The 23 best players under the age of 23 8: Anthony Martial, Manchester United Although it may have been the shock signing of the 2015 summer transfer window, Anthony Martial’s big money move to Manchester United was a deal with far deeper roots than his sudden fan base could know. A product of the famously productive youth teams of CO Les Ulis, in the south western banlieue, alongside other famous alumni such as Thierry Henry and Patrice Evra. The latter took a keen interest in the forward’s career ever since one of his former youth coaches passed on a pair of the left-back’s boots to a young Martial. It was a connection that would only grow as the striker’s career developed. Squawka The 23 best players under the age of 23 9: Julian Weigl, Borussia Dortmund Thomas Tuchel had long been expected to follow Jurgen Klopp as manager of Borussia Dortmund. What was far less expected was the identity of the player who would provide him with the impulse for the club’s next great evolutionary leap forward. Julian Weigl arrived from second division strugglers 1860 Munich in the summer of 2015 for the modest sum of €2.5 million. He was heralded as an exciting talent but one signed for the future rather than the first-team. Squawka The 23 best players under the age of 23 10: Hector Bellerin, Arsenal Hector Bellerin is all about speed. His progression from a seemingly awkward young winger at Watford to arguably the best right-back in the Premier League has been rapid. He’s eased himself into to a new culture, new language and a new position at Arsenal suspiciously quick, and he can also run unbelievably fast. So fast in fact that the Spaniard beat Theo Walcott’s 40m sprint record at Arsenal by 1/100th of a second – 4.42s. Squawka The 23 best players under the age of 23 11: Leroy Sane, Schalke Germany’s conveyor belt of talent has been in overdrive over the past three to four years so it takes a special kind of player to receive an international call-up to Die Mannschaft despite having just over 20 professional appearances to their name. Leroy Sane is just that. The Essen-born 20-year-old comes from good footballing stock. Soulemayne Sane was a regular for SC Freiburg and FC Nurgberg in the late 1980’s and earned over 50 caps for Senegal. Sane Sr obviously had grand plans for his next of kin. Squawka The 23 best players under the age of 23 12: Mauro Icardi, Inter Milan There may not be too many similarities between five-time Ballon d’Or winner Lionel Messi and Inter Milan’s up-and-coming striker Mauro Icardi, but there are two things in particular that stick out. Born in Rosario, like Messi, Icardi was brought up in tough neighbourhoods and turned to football at a young age to further his hopes. Squawka The 23 best players under the age of 23 13: Kinsgley Coman, Bayern Munich A regular starter in his first season at the Allianz Arena, it’s easy to forget that Kingsley Coman is still just 19. Even more impressively, he has already played more than 55 top-flight games across three of Europe’s big five leagues during his time at Paris Saint-Germain, Juventus and Bayern Munich. Squawka The 23 best players under the age of 23 14: John Stones, Everton Step-overs, shoulder feints and one-on-ones in the penalty area are usually moments that bring young attackers to the world’s attention. For John Stones, however, his own repertoire of skills have not only marked him out as a special player for England and Everton but a prospect with a truly radical range of abilities compared to the average British centre-back. Squawka The 23 best players under the age of 23 15: Domenico Berardi, Sassuolo The phrase ‘wand of a left foot’ may as well have been invented for Domenico Berardi. The 21-year-old Sassuolo forward has one of the sweetest left pegs in Italian football, and it’s an attribute that he will be hoping to take him to the very top of the game. Born in the town of Cariati in the south of Italy in the mid-1990s (we feel old too), Berardi spent a couple of years in Cosenza’s academy before moving to Sassuolo at the age of 16 in 2010. His breakthrough with the Neroverdi came in the 2012/13 season, when 11 goals helped propel the traditionally lower-league club into Serie A for the first time in its history. Squawka The 23 best players under the age of 23 16: Kurt Zouma, Chelsea Such is the nature of modern football, the minute that a club lacking in financial muscle find they have a good thing on their hands they will often do their best to prevent the whole world from finding out. Christophe Galtier found an his ingenious way of keeping at Saint-Etienne’s Kurt Zouma a secret for as long as possible by holding off giving the young defender a shirt number or even printing his name on his back, perhaps in the hope that clubs would think he was just a player making up the numbers. Squawka The 23 best players under the age of 23 17: Ruben Neves, Porto The first thing anyone needs to know about Ruben Neves is that he has played the same holding midfield role for Porto ever since he joined the club’s youth team at the age of eight. When most kids dream of scoring goals, beating a man or making a match-winning save, little ol’ Ruben was already treating football for what it is: a tactical to-ing and fro-ing where calmness is rewarded and risk is punished. Squawka The 23 best players under the age of 23 18: Saul Niguez, Atletico Madrid When you’re a footballer known by a mononym, people expect a certain level of brilliance from you. It’s not easy to blend in and just be part of the crowd if your lack of a surname marks you out as unique. Saul Niguez could have taken his time to develop, hanging around in the background, not really coming good until he was 23 or 24, and no one would have really complained. But Saul? Just Saul?! That boy better deliver right off the bat. Luckily for the player in question, that’s pretty much exactly what happened. Squawka The 23 best players under the age of 23 19: Hakan Calhanoglu, Bayer Leverkusen Not since the days of Hakan Suker and Emre Belozoglu have Turkey had a player to celebrate like Hakan Calhanoglu and, if everything goes according to plan, he could soon be held in even higher regard than both his predecessors. You may have seen the endless stream of YouTube highlights encompassing his many great freekicks — an array of stunning shots, whipped deliveries and curled efforts designed to arc around a defensive wall — but don’t let that cloud your judgement of the youngster and assume him only worthy of the status of a highlights player. Squawka The 23 best players under the age of 23 20: Ross Barkley, Everton Ross Barkley has never been short on self-belief, which is just as well. He’s needed it, not just as the inspiration to train hard, improve and express himself as one of the most exciting midfielders of his generation, but also to help him through the dark times. In 2010, he suffered a triple leg fracture playing for England’s Under 19s: an injury that not only threatened to set back the 16-year-old’s progress toward Everton’s first team but that could have potentially ended his chances of ever playing football professionally. Squawka The 23 best players under the age of 23 21: Jack Butland, Stoke Tall, athletic, commanding and, most importantly of all, a match-winner, Jack Butland is a goalkeeper with all the classic qualities expected of a star between the sticks. Destined for the top from an early age, the Bristol-born shot-stopper has shone at every level possible throughout his young career. Squawka The 23 best players under the age of 23 22: Gabriel Barbosa, Santos It was Zito, twice a World Cup winner with Brazil and a confirmed Santos great, who first recognised Gabriel Barbosa as a player of real promise. The youngster caught the eye of the former midfielder in a youth futsal game between Santos — the club of Pele, Robinho and Neymar — and São Paulo. He eventually signed for Santos and thrived within their youth teams, earning himself the nickname that is already becoming known around the world as news of his talent spreads: Gabigol. Squawka The 23 best players under the age of 23 23: Dele Alli, Tottenham Hotspur The signs were there from the start that Dele Alli would make it all the way to the very top. Few players have the audacity to mark their first touch in professional football with a back-heeled pass. Even the most daring talents of the Brazilian game would think twice, let alone a 16-year-old adolescent hailing from little old Milton Keynes. Squawka

Arsenal may want to play through Leicester, but they defend so compactly that is very difficult to do. Throwing high balls into the box towards Olivier Giroud is not necessarily the answer either. Leicester are so comfortable defending crosses because they have so many men in their own box when the cross comes in. Opponents playing 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 rarely get as many players in their box when they are attacking crosses, so the cross has to be pin-point. So Leicester have conceded 469 crosses this season, an average of almost 19 per game. Only Watford have allowed more. They are relaxed about it, because Leicester defend them so well.

But there is another way I think Arsenal can score. When they get the ball wide, rather than just trying to float a high ball in towards Giroud, they can cut it back to a runner arriving on the edge of the box. Leicester defend so deep that there is often space there. If Arsenal have Aaron Ramsey, Mesut Özil or Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain arriving at the right time, they could find a route to goal, shooting from the edge of the box from cut-backs along the ground.

Champions League will be a test of title-chasers’ priorities

The Champions League starts again next week, meaning we will start to see where the Premier League teams’ priorities lie. Playing in Europe can be tiring, but it can also effect a team’s focus in the build-up to a big midweek match.