On November 29th, Arsenal will travel to Carrow Road to take on Norwich City. The home side will look to turn their form around with only one win in their last seven. The Canaries have struggled to string any real form together this season, which has left them 16th. They’ll look to turn that around with a result against Arsenal. The Gunners will be looking to rebound from their disappointing loss to West Brom last weekend. They slumped to a 2-1 defeat despite allowing only one shot on target. With Arsenal talking about winning the title, they can’t afford to drop points in back to back games to bottom half sides.
Team News
Alex Neil will have most of his squad fit and at his disposal to try and beat Arsenal this Sunday. The only players he will definitely be without are Matt Jarvis and Alexander Tettey. Tettey is still about a week away from fitness with his thigh injury, while Jarvis is still struggling with his knee injury.
Arsenal have quite a few injuries to deal with, which shouldn’t really be a surprise to anyone at this point. The big injury for the Gunners is that to Francis Coquelin. The Frenchman injured his knee against West Brom and will be out for around three months. Mikel Arteta also picked up an injury against the Baggies and will miss the Norwich fixture. Theo Walcott is about a week away from returning from his calf injury. Danny Welbeck, Tomas Rosicky, and Jack Wilshere are all out with long term injuries.
Interesting Statistics
Norwich have only beat Arsenal at home once since 1984. They’ve also only beat the Gunners once in their last 13 meetings, and have lost the last three by a combined score of 9-2. Despite their loss last weekend, Arsenal still have the best away record in the Premier League. Arsenal are tied with Leicester City for the most goals scored away from home this season. Mesut Ozil is taking the plaudits for leading the league in assists with an incredible 11, but Norwich’s Wes Hoolahan is sitting behind only Ozil, Rihad Mahrez, and David Silva with five.
Key Players
Norwich City: Robbie Brady
Arsenal’s biggest weakness this season has been defending set pieces. They conceded yet another goal from a set piece against West Brom meaning that three of the 11 league goals they’ve conceded (27%) have been from set pieces this season. In all competitions that number climbs to eight of the 25 goals conceded (32%). For a team like Norwich, they’ll need to make set pieces count. Robbie Brady is a fantastic set piece taker and will need to make his chances from dead balls count. One other weakness in Arsenal last season was struggling to deal with crosses from the left. It hasn’t been as big a problem for them this season, but last year Arsenal struggled to deal with crosses in from the left to the back post. Brady will look to hit dangerous balls to the far post to exploit this weakness.
Arsenal: Mesut Ozil
At this point, it’s pretty obvious how important Mesut Ozil is to Arsenal. The German is arguably the form player in the Premier League and is on pace to obliterate the Premier League record for assists with 11 in only 12 appearances. He will look to extend his own Premier League record of most consecutive games with an assist to eight against the Canaries. If Mesut Ozil is on his game, it will be tough for Norwich to get anything from this game
Prediction
It’s hard to see anything other than an Arsenal win from this one. Arsene Wenger’s men tend to bounce back from disappointments pretty quickly and already showed that with their impressive 3-0 win over Dinamo Zagreb during the week. Norwich will look to frustrate the Gunners, but in the end the impact players like Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez should make the difference.
Prediction: 3-1 Arsenal
