The Premier League returns to action after a long 12 weeks when Arsenal make the trip to the Brentford Community Stadium in west London today.
It will be the hosts first Premier League match since the competition was renamed, or their first top-tier clash since 1947, when they were relegated to the second-division after just one season of football following the suspension of football thanks to World War II.
While today’s match will be exciting and scary for the hosts, Arsenal have their own issues to contend with, but I can’t help but believe that our team will be too ready for Brentford this evening.
The Bees earned promotion via the play-offs last term, and have done well to fend off interest in their star-striker Ivan Toney who scored a whopping 33 league goals last term, and he will definitely rank as the man to stop.
While we can focus much of our energy on denying one man, they will have their hands full with trying to spread their attentions across our entire front line, who shared much of the goalscoring equally last term, with all of Nicolas Pepe, Aubameyang and Lacazette all scoring at least 10 PL goals.
While our pre-season hasn’t exactly given us the results we would have liked, especially those seen in the Mind Series where we lost to both Chelsea and Spurs, there has been a number of positive performances from our players, with a large number of players being used in those matches in order to prepare for the new season.
I’m sure Arteta will have a strong grasp on which of his squad is most ready to start this evening’s PL opener, and I can’t see anything but a win, despite knowing that confidence is a little low amongst our faithful fans at present.
I can see Arsenal coming away with a nice 3-1 win to get our campaign off to a flyer today, and hopefully that will help to give us a nice confidence boost for Chelsea’s visit to the Emirates nine days later.
What are your predictions for today’s clash?
Patrick