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And the Blues will be keen to avoid a repeat of that this afternoon as a rather wounded Gunners side arrive at the City of Manchester Stadium today without Cesc Fabregas through suspension, Theo Walcott with a should injury, and harsh words from captain William Gallas ringing in their ears.
So with this week’s goings on and just one win from their last four league games does the City boss think it’s a good time to play host to Arsenal?
“It’s difficult to say. Away from home possibly they’re more dangerous at the moment because when teams go to the Emirates Stadium they know they’re going to be under pressure and have everyone behind the ball and hope for a break.
“They’ve been caught out in recent weeks as a consequence of that. Away from home they can draw the home side on to them and then break with pace and power, which they have in abundance, so you have to be very careful.”
As manager of Blackburn, Hughes’ robust side scored two wins and two draws against Wenger’s men, in what was often described as chalk and cheese between the two sides but the City boss puts that down to the simple appliance of science.
“Everyone’s got a huge respect for the type of football that Arsenal can produce,” he stated. “What you need to make sure is that you don’t get sucked in to their tempo and try to impose your will on them.
“I’ve had positive results in the past against Arsenal by basically just breaking up their tempo and making sure they don’t have things their own way.
“You have to impose your game plan on them and ask questions of them because if you concede too much ground against Arsenal they’re very adept at changing the play and the focus of their attacking threat that’s when mistakes can happen and they capitalise on them.
“They’ve got outstanding individual talent as well as a great work ethic and the ability to be very dangerous.”
But after success against the Gunners in his former job by ‘getting in the faces’ of Wenger’s side, Hughes knows he is more capable of going at Arsenal now, with players like Robinho, Wright-Phillips and Ireland at his disposal.
He added: “You have to break things up against them, but given the players that we have here we are attack minded and there’s no point me playing a hard pressing, physical game because we haven’t got those players for that.
“We play to our strengths, which is getting the ball down and trying to attack with pace and power, that’s done okay for us this year.
“We haven’t defended as well as we should have and that’s the reason we haven’t had as many positive results as we’d have liked. In an attacking sense I think on our day we’re as good as anybody.”
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