This week’s Premier League Preview « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager
The coming week’s Premier League Preview
By Arua
This article is mainly focused on giving the readers a short preview of what to expect when the premier league resumes for its 29th round of matches over a stretch of 5 days. The matches are arranged in the order in which they will be played. Since some ‘great performances’ have been produced by the referees this season, I have also included a link to it at the end of a given match (if I was able to find a link).
Let’s begin:
1. Wolverhampton Wanderers (19) v Manchester United (1) (Sunday ,13:30)
Wolves are down at the wrong end of table and Man U are at the top, so it looks like an easy victory for Manchester but Wolves are currently one position better than where they were last time when they ended Man U’s unbeaten run last year.
If the recent league form is anything to go by, then it’s definitely a victory for Man U given that they have dropped only 2 points out of last 18 available whereas Wolves have got only 4. Man U will be looking to bounce back from their Europa League exit with a victory and what better place than Wolverhampton to go! Wolves have lost their last 5 home games and 6 of last 7; their last victory at home was on 4th December last year. Overall, their home record stands at 3W-2D-9L and it’s highly likely that last column may go to double digits come this Sunday.
The only good looking thing for the Wanderers heading into this game is that they won the corresponding fixture at Molineux last year, but they have to be at their very very best to get anything out of this game.
Here is the ref review article : http://blog.emiratesstadium.info/archives/17409
2. Manchester City (2) v Chelsea (5) (Wednesday, 19:45)
This is undoubtedly the biggest fixture of this round, by far. Manchester City is in a bad run of form at the moment having lost 2 of their last 3 fixtures in all competitions and an early exit from the Europa League came as a result. Chelsea is on a very good run with a perfect record for RDM so far as the manager. Maybe they should have appointed him at the beginning of the season and they could have found themselves in a better position.
Coming back to the game, it is going to be a very difficult game for Chelsea, as the home record for City stands at 14-0-0 conceding only 6 goals and Chelsea have only won 5 of their 14 games on the road. Surprisingly, none of the last 10 meetings between these two teams in the Premier League have ended in a draw with Chelsea winning 7 and 3 of those have come at the Ethiad , however city won the last game at the Ethiad thanks to a Carlos Tevez strike. City has got time to look at their bad form at the weekend but Chelsea will look forward to book a FA Cup semifinal berth on Sunday.
Both teams might face difficulty ahead if they don’t get the job done. City will be under extreme pressure to win it as they may very well find themselves 4 points off the pace in the title race and so will be Chelsea knowing that a defeat here may very well end their hopes of Champions League football next season.
3. Tottenham H (3) v Stoke City (13) (Wednesday, 19:45)
Tottenham have been on a bad run since they were ‘hit by an Arsenal whirlwind and blown out of North London’ and the media doesn’t use the word ‘title contenders’ any more whereas Stoke have lost their last 3 away games and are 4W-2D-8L on the road for the season.
Tottenham have a good home record this season with 10 wins out of 14 scoring 30 nearly at an average of 2 goals a game whereas stoke have scored only 9 goals away from home. Just like City-Chelsea, these teams are yet to play a draw since Stoke got promoted in 2008 with Tottenham winning 4 of the 7 meetings in total and 2 out of 3 at White Hart Lane.
Really, not much to say about this game but I have a feeling that the team winning at the weekend may nick it though Tottenham are the betting favourites.
Here’s the link to Chris Foy’s epic performance to screw Spurs:
http://blog.emiratesstadium.info/archives/17607
4. Everton (9) v Arsenal (4) (Wednesday, 20:00)
After a wait of 9 days, Arsenal resumes the campaign with a visit back to Liverpool but this time to the neighbours Everton. Everton are a very hard working side and like Arsenal have been in good form of late until losing the Merseyside derby last Tuesday. They generally have a strong end to the season and will be looking forward to bouncing back from their defeat to Liverpool in the FA Cup tie with Sunderland, and a defeat there may leave them staring a hat-trick of defeats in all competitions. Arsenal is enjoying a great run of form of late with 5 consecutive Premier League victories including 4 comebacks and 3 second half injury time winners.
Coming back to the stats for this one I found something interesting information at the official website of the Premier league which tells you that Everton have won 4 of their last 5 games at the Emirates with the other being a draw; meaning that no Arsenal win! Hey, then in which game did Arsenal celebrate their 125th anniversary???
Against which team did RVP score a brilliant left foot volley???
Find out yourselves at http://www.premierleague.com/en-gb/matchday/matches/2011-2012/epl.past-meetings.html/everton-vs-arsenal
Their previous site definitely sucked but such blunder errors at the new site, seems like they want to make sure that no one visits their site (by the way, it was my first visit to their site this season). It seems like they got the home team data first for the away team which is wrong and it also leads to an error in the total victories for a particular team.
Whereas at Everton Arsenal has won 3 of the last 5 meetings losing only 1. I still remember the memorable 6-1 win at Goodison Park on the opening day of 2009-10 season. Recent scalps at Goodison include City, Spurs and Chelsea but with the confidence sky high in the squad at the moment I think that we are going to make it 6 victories in a row.
Here’s is the link: http://blog.emiratesstadium.info/archives/17313
Arun
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Our thoughts are of course with Fabrice Muamba. There is a very decent piece about him in the Guardian, including comments from Arsenal.