Arsenal v West Ham Match Preview, Line-up and Score Prediction

West Ham make the short trip across London tonight to take on Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium.

Both sides come into the match in dire form, but the Hammers’ struggles are much the more troubling, despite the reduced talk on the subject.

West Ham come into the match on the back of four consecutive losses, and have dropped to within six points of the relegation zone. Arsenal have simply dropped out of the top four, but a win today could well see them return to the battle for the Champions League spots.

A win today for Arsenal would see them leapfrog Manchester United into fifth spot on goal difference, and should Premier League leaders Chelsea beat Manchester City, it would leave us only four points from fourth spot with a game in hand.

We are into the most crucial part of the campaign, and as usual we are not able to fight in with a full strength squad. We come into the game with doubts over both Petr Cech and David Ospina, with Emiliano Martinez set to stand-in in goal. Santi Cazorla, Leurent Koscielny and Lucas Perez are also sidelined. Francis Coquelin is also a doubt to raise further questions over our playing squad, but our opponents have their fair share of absentees.

Predicted XI:

Martinez
Bellerin  Mustafi  Mertesacker Monreal
Xhaka   Oxlade
Walcott       Ozil         Sanchez
Welbeck

Our team should be able to deal with our list on the sidelines better than the Hammers, and we should add further woes to our rivals hopes to survive relegation. We will need to score goals however, and hopefully Per Mertesacker will be able to replace some of the leadership lost by the absences of Cech and Kosc.

I expect this team to bring goals, but a clean sheet may not be so easy to come by. I expect to come away with three or four goals, with our rivals hopefully limited to just the one. 3-1?

Will we have to concentrate on outscoring W. Ham? Could Martinez save the day?

Pat J

Tags Arsenal West Ham

10 Comments

  1. Oh yeah underestimate west ham at your peril they are battling to stay up ATM. That makes them dangerous regardless of our own club problems as well don’t mix well for just us giving them a good hiding. Will be tight at best, they will fancy there chances also of they can get there tails up. We have seen in the past games like Swansea dead easy then boom we lose. But let’s get behind the team and rally them on in the final stages of the season and hope we get something out of it yet. Coygs

    1. Things will change tonight. Arsenal will actuallly win a game.
      This rare occurrence will be used to unveil our ‘new’ manager which will be ‘Arsene the overhauler’ in place of ‘Arsene the dope’.
      All new, all good. Not!!!

  2. I agree Mr mclovin don’t expect much. But do you know I am very bitterly disappointed ? with everything that is unfolding atm we all love our club and only want the best for it lets hope for a brighter future up the gunners

  3. I don’t think Mertesacker will play. He has not played for a long time. I think Paulista will be the central defender. I know it would be the predictable 4-2-3-1 again, but I hope this time they can display an entertaining football for the fans. Win or lose doesn’t matter for me, as long as they play as a team and show flowing football. We will not get the title anyway, so might as well do some experiments as the basis for the next season.

    I wish they use a quick tempo three central defender formation though. Barcelona, Chelsea and Tottenham benefited from that kind of setup, so why can Arsenal not use it?

    1. 3-4-3 will be a gr8 formation but Wenger can’t try anything new, he’s too old for that. also the midfielders we have can’t handle new formation, they were fed the current formation their entire lives. hope the GK will be good today, never saw him play

      1. I would like to see a 352 instead 😛

        I think Bellerin could do well as a right winger… Not sure on a left winger though, maybe Gibbs?

        I would like a 3 man CM to help win the CM battles in games and dominate from the middle of the pitch, could have 1 holding CM and 2 B2B alongside the holding player which could allow for a us to press high up in a fake 3142 formation.

        Although with our current squad I do not think we have 3 CB we can trust 🙁
        Kos is injured? He came off and not read more about it…
        Per is far from match sharp and he doesn’t have the pace to cover him from slow reactions.
        Gabriel doesn’t fill me with confidence when it comes to footballing intelligence, prone to errors IMO.

        I have more faith with Holding than Gabriel, heck I would prefer to see Bielik play instead if he wasn’t on loan… I really wanted to like Gabriel as well 🙁 Shown passion and willing to fight for his team but just makes too many errors 🙁

        1. I think you’re right, our CM wouldn’t likely be strong enough for a 343. We have trouble protecting four defenders with two there now, so I think a three man middle would be best.

  4. Xhaka needs to start stepping it up already, Mustafi too. The season is nearly over and these were said to be strong characters, meant to be different from who we usually target. Xhaka needs to be a tough competitor and able to do it standing on his feet. We need to see more, much more.

    I’d be worried with Ospina for this game. His handling is very poor, especially against an aerial threat team with a player like Carrol in it. Maybe Martinez can claim some high balls then holding onto them. Same with shots, it causes unnecessary problems trying to deflect every shot away, if there is a chance you can claim it then that is what a good keeper should do.

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