Arsenal head into the weekend’s big Premier League clash with a great chance of beating a struggling Liverpool team and banishing the memories of last season’s 5-1 pasting at Anfield. A win could put the Gunners as high as fourth and will open up an eight point gap on Brendan Rodgers and his players.
Arsenal do have plenty of our own problems to deal with, as usual. The injury situation at the Emirates may be easing, but Arsene Wenger will still have to do without a long list of key players such as Mesut Ozil, Theo Walcott, Aaron Ramsey, Jack Wilshere, Mikel Arteta and Laurent Koscielny.
So it is good to see that our rivals have their own problems as well and they are not restricted to low confidence and poor performances. Brendan Rodgers has this week lost two more players for the visit of Arsenal and that has got to be good news for us.
Dejan Lovren picked up an injury in the midweek league cup game at Bournemouth, joining Johnson and Flanagan in the Anfield treatment room and leaving Liverpool’s defence just as stretched, if not more so, than ours. And now they have been weakened at the other end as well, with the news on Sky Sports that Mario Balotelli has been given a one game ban for his recent twitter post that was supposed to be anti-racist but was actually offensive.
Nario may not be so super at the minute but he is one of their few options and there was always the chance that he would spark into action against Arsenal. Now at least we have one less thing to worry about so things are looking good for the Gunners.