Yesterday wasn’t the greatest but Sunday could be much more promising. Off the back our first Europa League loss of the season we head to Turf Moor to try and maintain pace in the race for Europe.
As usual we’ll probably field a much stronger, possibly completely changed squad on Sunday and in all fairness, that squad is the one everyone’s excited about.
After holding Spurs in a chokehold at The Emirates last Saturday, many people have said that this will be the real test. If we can do it at Burnley that’ll show the real mark of improvement.
Well there’s truth in that of course as everyone wants to see us perform like last week, week in week out. The thing is Arsenal have never lost away at Burnley in the Premier League (2 wins and a draw). So maybe Burnley shouldn’t be who we measure our improvements on.
With that being said though, Burnley have looked very encouraging this season under Sean Dyche, who has taken them up to 7th place (one place below Arsenal) after 12 games.
We all know that Burnley have been solid at the back for years but this year they finally seem to be getting the goals to start the balancing act. Adding Chris Wood up top has worked well for them has he’s notched three important goals since his move from Leeds as the players around him have started chipping in which has seen them win their last three games.
Maybe Arsenal’s form table isn’t as pretty as Burnley’s with that loss to Manchester City standing out but we’ll be hoping to continue our return from the break as we did in September.
Before that international break we lost 4-0 away at Liverpool but in the next month of football we didn’t lose a single game in the Premier League, so maybe the break came at the right time after the City loss.
Also, with our first team being just as fresh as Burnley having not played away in Germany on Thursday, we should be going into the game in good faith.
With the pace also picking up on the rumours around Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil its key to remember that they’re still our players at the moment, so the front three trio of AOL should keep their place.
With that and the fact that Sanchez has scored in four of his five meetings with Burnley, the very exciting proposition of AOL could either run riot like last week or give the critics more ammo.
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