After a rather disastrous start to the Premier League campaign, Arsenal has had a week to look back at the errors that were made on the opening matchday and the fans would be hoping for a better performance against a Crystal Palace side that has become hard to beat at home since Alan Pardew took over.
Arsenal Team News
After suffering a thigh strain last week, Hector Bellerin will be making his return to the first team, alongside Alexis Sanchez, that’s ‘ready to play’ according to the manager. Wenger is tipping Sanchez for greatness this season and we all pray he doesn’t suffer from the world-famous ‘second season syndrome’ that has become all too familiar in the Premier League. However, with Alexis coming back into the side, someone would have to give way and it’s going to be interesting to see who it’s going to be. I have a hunch that Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, despite his good run of form, might be the one to get the boot, and I see Wenger resorting to the setup he used on the tail end of last season.
The record books favor Arsenal in this fixture, as they have beaten the Eagles in their last five meetings. Arsenal boasts of a very strong away record going back into last season and they have won five of their last six on the road, as well as winning six of their last 10 London derbies.
Arsenal Injury / Suspension News
Jack Wilshere (ankle), Tomas Rosicky (knee), Mathieu Flamini (ankle) and Danny Welbeck (knee)
Arsenal Predicted Lineup
Crystal Palace Team News
Arsenal are unbeaten in 12 visits to Selhurst Park (unbeaten since 1979) which will give the Eagles manager a cause for concern, but he’s focused on his own game,
“Arsenal’s manager has enough experience to use that negative [against West Ham] last weekend as a positive this weekend. It’s difficult to stop them but we need to play our game. Generally, our performance at Norwich was below our best.
“We want more control in games this year. We want to wrestle control from Arsenal. Our strength is as a counter-attacking side. Unfortunately that won’t be enough against some teams, we need to be more than that.”
The records don’t favor the Eagles as they have never won their opening two matches in the top division. Pardew has been very impressive for the club since he joined last season and he has equaled the most number of wins by a Crystal Palace manager in the Premier League (11) even though he has only been in charge for 19 games. He has to be concerned about his team’s defensive record though, because Crystal Palace kept only three clean sheets at home all season long in the Premier League last season.
It would be interesting to see how Yohan Cabaye plays today’s game when he had set his sights on joining the Gunners from Newcastle a long while ago. PSG offered him an escape route from England but he quickly found out that the grass isn’t greener on the other side I guess.
Crystal Palace Injury / Suspension News
Julian Speroni (finger), Marouane Chamakh (hamstring) and Frazier Campbell (hamstring)
Crystal Palace Predicted Lineup
Team Form
Crystal Palace
- Last Five Games: W L D L W
- Last Result: Norwich 1 (Redmond 69?) – Crystal Palace 3 (Zaha 39?, Delaney 49′, Cabaye 90′)
- Leading Goalscorer: Wilfried Zaha, Damien Delaney, Yohan Cabaye (1)
Arsenal
- Last Five Games: W W W W L
- Last Result: Arsenal 0 – West Ham 2 (Kouyate 43′, Zarate 57′)
- Leading Goalscorer: Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain (1)
Gooner Daily predicts 2 – 0 to the Arsenal
Sayonara.
Download the Gooner Daily BlackBerry App to receive notifications on your Smart Phone when a post is published.
Follow Gooner Daily on Twitter @goonerdaily. I’ll follow back
Visit Gooner Daily’s Facebook page.
Click on the “Follow button” to join Gooner Daily’s Mailing List
