Saturday 4th October Sunderland vs Arsenal Arsenal need to bounce back to their shock home defeat to Hull last week with a win at Sunderland otherwise doubts of winning the Premier League will come into their heads.
Sunderland have picked up 7 points from their opening 6 games, having lost to three teams with european ambitions at the end of this season; Liverpool, Manchester City and Aston Villa. They did beat Tottenham on the opening day of the season at White Hart Lane and their only win at home came against Middlesbrough. Kenwyne Jones is still a few weeks away from returning and Carlos Edwards has recently been loaned out to Wolves for three months. Without Jones, Sunderland have had Cisse up front recently who has scored twice in six appearances as he settles down at his new team. Sunderland like to pass the ball around under Roy Keane, but against the top sides that hasn’t worked as they don’t have the quality of the top sides. Sunderland lost all eight games against the top four last season, with their 3-2 defeat at the Emirates being the only game they scored in.
Arsenal suffered only their second Premier League defeat at the Emirates stadium, with this being their third season there. Their other defeat came against West Ham, but the curious people out there might like to know that unlike Hull this wasn’t West Ham’s first season in the Premier League following their promotion from the playoffs. Arsenal, as expected followed that defeat up with a thumping 4-0 at the expense of FC Porto in the Champions League on Tuesday night. Arsene Wenger’s men know they need to pick up all three points here to maintain their realistic title hopes, and they’re perfectly capable of achieving that. Tomas Rosicky, Eduardo and Abou Diaby will miss this match through injury whilst Alexandre Song could feature. Emmanuel Adebayor and Robin van Persie are forming a good partnership up front and should be too much for the Sunderland defence to handle.
Arsenal won this fixture 1-0 on the final day of last season with a mainly reserve squad at the time, with Theo Walcott scoring the only goal. Arsenal won 3-2 at home with Robin van Persie scoring twice. The Dutchman also scored twice midweek and is on good form.
Best bet: Arsenal to win 8/13
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