Another Premier league weekend is upon us and it gets underway on Friday evening when two sides who start this round of matches in the bottom half of the table meet at the Emirates Stadium when Arsenal entertain Aston Villa.
Both teams have three wins to their name from their opening eight matches and whoever gets a fourth in this encounter will fly up to ninth in the table ahead of the remainder of the games this weekend.
Where to watch
The match will be shown live and in full on the Friday Night Football programme which will be screened on the Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Sports Premier League channel. The show begins at 7pm with kick off coming at 8pm.
Arsenal
When you assess their eight matches as a whole it has been a pretty ordinary start to the season for Arsenal and you wonder when they are going to come under the media scrutiny that other teams who are going better than them are under. There doesn’t appear a huge amount to be positive about right now and although they rescued a point late on against Crystal Palace on Monday night, there was absolutely nothing that was convincing about that performance.
Arsenal have won three matches this season but two of those were against Burnley and Norwich and the other was against a Tottenham side who never showed up on the day so the Gunners really need a statement win for me to take them seriously. I’d also like to know what they are about because I don’t see any sort of philosophy right now. I just see a team who don’t know what their plan is and although I’m no Arsenal fan, when you consider the great attacking sides they’ve given us over the last 10-15 years, that is a shame.
Aston Villa
It has been an up and down season for Aston Villa so far too. There was always going to be an element of that because they have had to adjust to life without Jack Grealish, and while they put the money they got for him to good use, the players who have come in need time to gel. It might be that we don’t see the best of Villa until the second half of the campaign, but on paper at least they look a perfectly decent unit who should be higher in the table than they currently are.
The one good thing about this Villa side is that they have goals in them. They have scored 12 times in their eight matches but the concerning thing is that in just eight games they have conceded three goals in three of those outings, including last week when they capitulated against Wolves from 2-0 up. I suspect there will have been some work going in defensively in the week but the fact they have had two extra days to prepare for this match has to be a positive.
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Team News
Arsenal are going to check over the fitness of Bukayo Saka after he was forced to leave the draw with Crystal Palace at half time last week. Mikel Arteta has claimed he has fitness concerns over ‘two or three’ players but didn’t name who they were.
Aston Villa will be boosted by the availability of Leon Bailey and Bertrand Traore after both have recovered from thigh problems. Matty Cash was forced off with a dead leg last week but he has recovered and is expected to start too.
Betting
This should be a decent way to start the Premier League weekend and it is a match I think the visitors can get something from. I don’t know what to make of Arsenal. I don’t really see where they are going and they do nothing for me from an entertainment point of view, and in this league this season they are very much the anomaly in that regard. The relatively short turnaround from an ordinary performance on Monday night isn’t exactly ideal here either.
Aston Villa have had issues defensively this season but when they’ve been good they have looked solid. They already have wins over Manchester United and Everton this season and if they can stay compact and tight at the back, and they might not be tested too much to stop that from happening if Arsenal’s performance on Monday night is anything to go by, then there are definitely goals in this Villa side at the other end of the pitch. Chelsea are the only team who have stopped Aston Villa scoring this season and Arsenal are nothing like as good as them at the back. As long as Villa don’t kill themselves, which I don’t expect to happen again after last week, I think they take at least a draw away from this one with them.
Tips
Back Aston Villa (+0.5AH) to beat Arsenal for a 3/10 stake at 1.99 with Bet365
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