Arsenal v Bournemouth. The predicted team, and the predicted score

 

 

By Tony Attwood

• Arsenal v Bournemouth; what recent events tell us about the game
• Arsenal v Bournemouth – the Arsenal Injuries and extremely confusing qualification routes

There is a page on the internet which includes the question How are you feeling about the state of Arsenal’s season?

There were six possible answers ranging from “It looks set to exceed all my expectations” through to “Angry at where we find ourselves.”   10% of those who answered agreed with the “Angry” point.  And it struck me that if one is angry at seeing Arsenal top of the league as we approach mid-April, then maybe some counselling is needed.  Unless, of course, these were Tottenham supporters, with them now being in 18th, and Untold having pointed out for much of the season that the best-known way of taking a team down is to keep changing the manager.

For I can’t see how any real Arsenal supporter can be angry at a league table that reads

 

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Arsenal	31	21	7	3	61	22	39	70
2	Manchester City	30	18	7	5	60	28	32	61

 

…in a season in which ManC still haven’t been given any penalty for the 110+ charges levelled against them

And this reveals the problem with all these types of surveys – they can be answered by anyone, and so don’t actually tell us what Arsenal supporters think.   And even if they did, what sort of Arsenal supporters would they be?  Season ticket holders, those who get tickets just when they can, which isn’t often, those who watch on TV, those overseas?  Different groups, I think, have different opinions.

On the injury front, the latest is that Merino and Piero Hincapie are the only players now definitively ruled out.    Timber and Saka are rate 50% and Eze is rated 100%. Quite a turnaround from the start of the week!

Football London tells us with absolute certainty that Max Dowman will start and the full-backs will be rotated, but then they also call this a “crunch Premier League clash,” which presumably means that everything is a crunch game.  I would have said that if there were to be a crunch game, it was West Ham v Wolverhampton which left the bottom of the table now seeming to show us that Tottenham and Arsenal have played the same number of games, but Arsenal have picked up 40 more points, scored 21 more goals, conceded 28 fewer and are 17 places above their nearby “rivals”.   (Although rivals now seems a bit strong for a team that wins just 22% of their games.  It’s a bit like saying Arsenal were rivals with Wood Green Town, who before their demise also played in White Hart Lane.  Here’s a current table extract.

 

 

Football London give us an Arsenal line up of

Raya;

Mosquera, Saliba, Gabriel, Lewis-Skelly;

Zubimendi, Rice, Dowman;

Madueke, Gyokeres, Eze.

Sky Sports, however go on to say there is still uncertainty about the fitness of Martin Odegaard, Bukayo Saka, Piero Hincapie, Riccardo Calafiori and Jurrien Timber 

Meanwhile, the BBC suggest that if Arsenal can win this one, this would “equal Arsenal’s longest winning run this season of five Premier League fixtures, a feat they have achieved twice already in 2025-26.”   Now getting the same run of wins three times in a season isn’t necessarily that exciting except that three sets of winning five in a row is actually quite unusual.  They also suggest Downman will have some involvement in the game, but are not sure about him starting.

They also point out that Downman was the second youngster player to play in the Champions League knock-out stage, being 39 days older than Filip Pavic, who played for Bayern.  They also go to some length to urge us to look out for the Bournemouth teenager Junior Kroupi, who should be playing this lunchtime.

ESPN have come up with the fact that “Bournemouth are Declan Rice‘s favourite opponents in the Premier League, with the midfielder having his most goals (5) and goal involvements (7) against them.”   And the ESPN article also has a most interesting note in saying, “It’s not as if the Gunners and Mikel Arteta were in panic mode after back-to-back cup defeats…”   And I find that interesting because that is exactly what most of the media were suggesting – indeed, it was the media that were hyping up panic mode and dropping Arsenal in it.   ESPN suggest a 2-1 Arsenal victory, but don’t suggest a team.

But the Metro do offer a line up with exactly the same players Football.London.

Sports Mole however do manage to find a different XI and they also go for a 2-1 victory.

Raya;

White, Saliba, Gabriel, Hincapie;

Havertz, Zubimendi, Rice;

Madueke, Gyokeres, Martinelli

They also make the point that “The visitors have miraculously avoided defeat in each of their last 11 top-flight contests – never before have they gone 12 without losing in the Premier League,” which I think helps tip everything in Arsenal’s favour.   As we have observed before, Arsenal have won 11 more games than Bournemouth this season, scored 15 more goals, conceded 26 fewer goals and thus have a goal difference that is 41 beyond Bournemouth’s. Not to mention having 28 additional points.

I’ll go with further, and think Arsenal will be setting aside the two-match blip over the last two years when Bournemouth scored two against us in each game.  The media is going 2-1, but I think we might get a third as Bournemouth tired near the end.