While Arsene Wenger and everyone else connected to Arsenal is hoping to see the sort of performance from the Gunners at Carrow Road this weekend that has become just about par for the course in the Premier League this season, the Norwich manager Alex Neil is clearly hoping that we have another game like the one away to West Brom last weekend.
That trip to the Hawthorns produced just a third defeat of the season and the only one since the opening day loss to West Ham that was down to the deficiencies of the Arsenal team rather than the obvious failings of a certain Mr Mike Dean.
And while our back four and the new keeper Petr Cech have done very well in stopping the opponents from scoring, our success so far this season has been mainly based upon the ability of top quality Gunners like Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez to make the breakthrough at the other end.
This is what has been worrying the Norwich boss, as revealed in a Sky Sports report.
He said, “Arsenal will want to put points on the board. They have had a good season and are the hardest attacking team to stop.”
The Gunners have the joint best away scoring record in the division and only three clubs have conceded more goals than Norwich so far so Neil has good reason to be worried. At least he will not surprised at the way we approach the match though, as he has been with some of our rivals.
He went on, “We will be regarded as one of the smaller teams in the league. But even when so-called bigger teams come to our place, they have been happy to sit behind the ball, soak up pressure and hit you on the counter attack and that sort of surprised me.
“You would have thought that some of them would have come here and tried to impose themselves, go toe-to-toe but that has not been the case and has been quite surprising.”
Don’t worry Alex there will be no surprises on Sunday as Arsenal will be going for goals from the kick off. But will our attack prove as difficult as the Norwich manager fears?