Arsenal will hope to continue their perfect opening to the season as they travel to Vitality Stadium to play newly-promoted Bournemouth. Arsenal are one of only two teams to have won their first two games this season, the other being Manchester City (because of course it is). The game kicks off at 5:30pm UK time (12:30pm EDT). Craig Pawson will be the referee for this match with assistants Marc Perry and Scott Ledger. Graham Scott will be the fourth official and Paul Tierney will be on VAR duty with Dan Robathan.

Last Match Highlights

A few quick notes from last weekend’s match against Leicester. I mentioned in the match preview that I would be looking at how Arteta used his subs, and I think he did about what he needed to with them. It never really felt like we were in danger of losing control of the game, so there was no need for tactical substitutions, but he did give a good 10-15 minutes to a few of our players who are returning from injury.

One player that I wasn’t at all expecting to watch closely was Granit Xhaka. It seemed like he made more runs into the box this game than he has in the entire rest of his Arsenal career combined. He definitely has a more attacking role this season, and he’s adapting well enough. Sure, there’s probably still room for an upgrade some time in the future. There were a few times that I thought “If that was someone who had just a little more pace or better attacking instincts, they would have buried the ball in the back of the net.” However, for now he’s doing a great job. Perhaps we might not need Tielemans afterall?

Lastly, our game control was superb. Leicester never had any sort of extended period of possession, and we had plenty of dangerous chances throughout the game. What particularly impressed me was the way we bounced back both times that they scored. Last season, those kinds of moments might have led to a collapse of our confidence and, at best, would have made the rest of the game a bit tense. But this game, it took us less than two minutes each time to come right back at them and cancel out their goal. It shows a real improvement in our mentality this season.

Expected Arsenal Starting XI

Now, back to this weekend’s game. I expect that Arsenal will field the same lineup as they have been for the past few games for a couple reasons. Firstly, there’s the idea that you don’t change a winning formula, and that’s certainly what we have here. Also, more importantly, we’ve had a tendency in the past few seasons to rush key players back from injury because we couldn’t cope well without them. This sometimes led to the injury resurfacing, forcing the player to miss even more time. This time around, we have proven that we can cope without the likes of Tierney, Tomiyasu, and Smith-Rowe. That’s not to say they aren’t important players anymore, but rather that we can take our time reintegrating them into the starting XI. Perhaps if we’re up by a few goals in the 60th minute, we can get those players a good half-hour of game time to get match fit.

What to Expect from Bournemouth

Bournemouth currently sit 11th in the table after winning their opening game 2-0 at home against Aston Villa and unsurprisingly losing 4-0 at Man City. They had an average of around 33% possession with a total of 10 shots and a combined xG of 0.72 between those two games.

I won’t claim to know enough about Bournemouth to predict their starting XI, but they do tend to play with a back three, which likely turns to a back five on defense. They’ve brought in five new signings this summer, including former Barcelona backup keeper Neto, and have a couple of injured players, including Dominic Solanke who started their first game.

Key Questions

Can we break down a low block?

As is the case with most lower-table teams, I expect Bournemouth will sit in a low block for most of the game. Last season we had trouble breaking down teams who did this because our attack was a bit predictable. However, with the additions of Jesus and Zinchenko this season, we have the ability to be a bit more dynamic in the way we attack. This will be a great test of just how well we can break down teams that sit back and let us attack them.

How steady are we when they get a break on us?

Another aspect of the way teams like Bournemouth tend to play against us is that they don’t have a lot of possession,instead opting to try and hit us on the counter-attack. We tend to play a very high defensive line with our center-backs generally sitting right in the center circle when we’re playing in the opposition’s half, making us a bit more vulnerable to these kinds of tactics. When we inevitably lose possession at times this weekend, we’ll want to try and snuff out any chance of a break early on. The question is, do we have the tactical awareness to pull this off successfully, and if not, can we cope with the couple of breakaway chances that they might get?

Can we kill off the game early?

Last season, even against lower-table teams, it seemed like we could never get more than a one or two goal lead. And even when we did get a few more goals, it always felt like we were just one mistake away from letting the team right back into the game. This season, I really want to see that we can go to teams like this, dominate the game, get a few goals in the first half, and then relax for the last 30-45 minutes of the game confident that the other team has no chance.

Final Prediction

I, like many other Arsenal supporters, will be going into this game fairly confident of a win. It’s nice to go into a game not thinking about whether or not we’ll win, but rather how many goals we’ll win by. I’m predicting we’ll get a 4-0 win at Vitality Stadium with goals from Jesus, Martinelli, Saka, and Saliba.