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Arsenal v Everton Premiership Prediction
Saturday, 10 December 2011
Barclays Premier League
Arsenal v Everton, 15:00
Author: Thomas Rooney 06/12/2011
Arsenal host Everton this weekend hoping to continue their progress into the Premier League’s top four, while David Moyes’ men are desperate to find their form in front of goal to establish themselves in the top half of the table.
Focusing on Arsenal to begin with, it has to be mentioned that their form has been much better recently. They suffered a horrendous start to the campaign – losing four of their opening seven games – and the way they have recovered has to be praised.
It of course helps when you have a striker as talented and in-form as Robin Van Persie, but it has been a team effort to get the Gunners back up to 5th in the table, just two points behind Chelsea who occupy the final Champions League place as things stand.
Arsene Wenger’s men have qualified for the knock-out stages of the Champions League this year too, so overall, things aren’t anything like as bad as they were at the start of the campaign.
Having said that, they are not out of the woods yet. They have recovered well from a poor start and this is admirable, but there have been a couple of negative results recently and this needs to be counteracted with a positive performance this weekend.
Looking at the negative results, they suffered a 1-0 defeat at home to Manchester City – meaning the first chance of silverware this season is now gone – and before this they were held to a 1-1 draw at home to Fulham in the Premier League.
Most recently though, they won 4-0 at Wigan in a performance you would associate with the great Arsenal teams of years gone by. Slick passing, fast counter attacks and ruthless finishing.
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The thing is, Arsenal are always capable of scoring goals. They have Van Persie of course, but Theo Walcott has been in great form too and Mikel Arteta is starting to find his feet in the middle of the park alongside Aaron Ramsey.
What they need to ensure is that they remain tight at the back, something which has been made much easier by the return to fitness of Thomas Vermaelen. In the five games he has started since returning, the Gunners have only conceded three times and this says a lot.
As for Everton, their problem has been finding the back of the net. The 1-0 home defeat to Stoke City last time out highlighted their lack of options up front and David Moyes has admitted that he needs to bring in an attacking player in the January transfer window.
They are still capable of winning games – they won two in a row before the defeat to Stoke – but they often have to rely on the likes of Leighton Baines, Phil Jagielka or Jack Rodwell to get on the score sheet for three points to be obtained.
This is fine for winning the odd game and maintaining a mid-table position, but if they are to go on a season defining run and push the top seven, they need a striker that can be relied upon to find the back of the net regularly. At the moment, they don’t have that.
Moyes is a determined manager though and he will want his players to bounce back against Arsenal this weekend. The Toffees are certainly hard to beat and they will go to the Emirates with a clear game plan in terms of stopping Arsenal going forward
With this in mind, it seems likely to be a tight game with. However, Arsenal’s extra attacking threat means they will come away with the points.
Football betting tip: Arsenal @ 4/7 with Bet365 - £200 deposit bonus
Correct score prediction: Arsenal 2:1 Everton @ 9.2 with Betfair
Watch our Football Video Podcast on the Arsenal v Everton match by Thomas Rooney and Pete South including their predictions.