Premier League
Arsenal vs Bournemouth Preview
The Emirates Stadium plays host to Arsenal and Bournemouth for an important midweek clash on Wednesday night. Arsenal will remain in the top 4 with a win against mid table Bournemouth. Depending on results elsewhere, a win for Eddie Howe’s Cherries could push them into the top half of the table.
Team News
The obvious missing pieces to the Arsenal setup are Hector Bellerin, Rob Holding, and Danny Welbeck. The three senior players all suffered long term injuries and will not return to the pitch this season. In addition, Alex Iwobi and Stephan Lichtsteiner will face a fitness test after both picked up injuries in the win vs Southampton. Ainsley Maitland-Niles is expected to be back in the team after recovering from illness. If he was still unavailable, the choices at right back would be very slim. Shkodran Mustafi covered at the position for a portion of the last match and has played there in his career before. Maybe that solves the issue of getting him out of central defense?
Bournemouth are going to be without a handful of players for their trip to North London. Midfielder Jefferson Lerma will begin serving his two-match ban for yellow card accumulation. The Colombian has already picked up 10 yellow cards in his first Premier League season. Steve Cook, Junior Stanislas, Callum Wilson, and David Brooks will all miss the trip due to injury. The squad is stripped thin for the midweek trip.
Prediction
Arsenal were victorious in their last match against Southampton 2-0. Anyone who saw the match will tell you that it could have been four or five, and probably should have been. Bournemouth are winless in their last three and have only won twice in their previous nine matches played. Of course one of those wins was a 4-0 thumping of Chelsea, so anything can happen.
Even though Arsenal are expected to rotate heavily to save legs for the North London Derby at the weekend, the injury list is just too big for Bournemouth to overcome. They have only picked up nine points in 13 away matches this season and I do not see them adding to the tally. Arsenal will win this match comfortably 2-0.
Photo credit to Dickson Dagogo via Flickr
