The old adage that ‘there are no easy games in the Premier League’ has certainly been proven right when you look around at the results in the first two weeks of the season. It seems incredible that top teams like Liverpool, Man United and West Ham are yet to register one win between them, but Arsenal have come flying out of the traps and are the only team with 100% of points along with Champions Man City.
As Arteta said yesterday on SkySports: “When you see the fixtures and the results in the first two games of the season and you had to bet, I’m sure you would have lost a lot of money!” he said. “That’s not how it is in the Premier League, unfortunately.
“All we need to do is play and perform as well as we possibly can to earn the right to win. It doesn’t matter who we play against.”
So Arsenal maybe hot favourites against the newly-promoted side, but the bookies will take bets on nearly anything, knowing that there are always going to be unexpected results. I saw this morning that GGbet are taking bets on esports games like https://gg.bet/en/counter-strike/, but you can’t help but feel that Arteta’s expensively assembled side to take them one step closer to being cemented in the Top Four.
The Champions League is the ultimate target this season, but the boss is also at pains to make it clear that nothing is clearcut at this time of the season. “We don’t have to get carried away,” Arteta said. “We’ve played two games and we’re going to have another difficult game tomorrow against Bournemouth.
“You know how tough this league is so there’s still everything to play for – we’ve done nothing and we have to be very conscious of that.”
It has been suggested that the Gunners have been given an “easy” fixture list to start this campaign, but to beat Palace away and Leicester at home has been no easy feat. If Mikel Arteta can lead his team to a third win, it would be the first time Arsenal have done that since 2003, so a win today will look like a major achievement. “These are stats and they are there for a reason,” Arteta said, but he prefers to take it game by game. “Obviously our aim is to go there and win and we know they are not going to make it easy for us.
“It’s a team that has started the season pretty well – they had a really good win against Villa and they’ve been consistently performing for over a year. It will be tough.”
It will be tough, but I am feeling pretty confident we will come out with the three points in the end…
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Playing promoted sides early in the season is always difficult – as we found out in last season’s opener.
Forest almost walked on water against WHU – giving everything in front of rabid home fans.
This game is a potential banan skin. I’d rather play Man Utd at this stage than Bournemouth.
We had never won the first three games on the spin in two decades, an interesting stats I was not aware of.
The year Leicester won the season it was the same like this as fans and opposition keep saying the wheels will soon falls off and the next game will be different but they keep winning and winning until it was too late to be pegged back.
There is something about our play just cant nail it down just yet