Troy Deeney says he has seen a £27m player at Arsenal who actually reminds him of Didier Drogba

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Didier Drogba caused a lot of pain to Arsenal fans during his time at Chelsea.

The Ivorian, on his day, was capable of winning games on his own, and unfortunately for Gooners, he found a way to score against them regularly.

In 15 appearances against Arsenal, Drogba managed to score 13 goals and provide three assists. He only ever lost one game against the North Londoners as well.

Arsenal fans will never remember Drogba too fondly, but one of their own players has now been compared to the Chelsea legend.

Troy Deeney explains why Arsenal’s Gabriel Magalhaes reminds him of Didier Drogba

Arsenal signed Gabriel Magalhaes for just £27 million from Lille in the summer of 2020.

Nobody had really heard about the Brazilian at the time, but he scored on his debut and has been a regular under Mikel Arteta ever since.

Gabriel has improved consistently since joining Arsenal. He has made mistakes over the years, but he is now one of the best centre-halves in the Premier League and perhaps even in Europe.

The Brazil international’s defending is sometimes overshadowed by William Saliba’s brilliance next to him, but Gabriel more than makes up for that at the other end of the pitch.

There’s no bigger threat in the Premier League in set-pieces than Gabriel, and his presence inside the box has caused problems to every team the Gunners have faced.

Troy Deeney scored a few good goals with his head back in the day, and he feels he has seen Gabriel’s headers somewhere before – in Drogba.

When told Gabriel is brilliant at heading the ball, Deeney said on talkSPORT: “He’s going with the anticipation of ‘I’m going to win this header’ every time.

“Didier Drogba used to do it all the time, even when he was in the first post space defensively, he would win everything – ‘If it comes in that area, I’m heading it, get out of the way!'”

Didier Drogba thinks he knows how to stop Arsenal’s set-pieces

Drogba was always a key player for Chelsea in set-pieces – in both boxes.

The Ivory Coast icon scored plenty of goals from corners, but he helped the likes of John Terry defend in those situations on several occasions as well.

After all the talk about Arsenal’s set-pieces in recent days, Drogba has publicly claimed that there’s a simple way to stop Nicolas Jover and his tactics.

Replying to a post on Instagram, Drogba said: “Put someone in front of the corner taker ten meters away and tell him to jump so the corner taker won’t be able to deliver a good ball.

“Then, you ask your goalkeeper to take all the sloppy balls and ask your defenders to protect him.”