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Arsenal v Leicester preview | Duo ruled out, Ramsey on the bench + prediction

By on October 22, 2018

pierre-emerick aubameyang arsenal

Arsenal will be looking to climb back in to the top four with a win when we take on Leicester City at the Emirates Stadium this evening.

The international break came at a bad time for us as we’ve been on a superb run of form in recent weeks that’s seen us win our last nine games in all competitions – including our last six in the Premier League.

That run helped us recover from our opening defeats to Manchester City and Chelsea, and victory tonight would see us move level on points with third-placed Chelsea and fourth-placed Tottenham.

Any form of win would see us go fourth while victory by four goals would mean we climb above Chelsea on goals scored to sit two points behind City and Liverpool after nine games, which would be hugely exciting.

Leicester arrive in the capital off the back of a 2-1 defeat to Everton before the international break but they sit 11th in the table having taken 12 points from their eight games so far and could go eighth in they win tonight.

Team news

Arsenal have been boosted by the return to fitness of Mesut Ozil after he overcame a back injury that kept him out of the 5-1 win over Fulham while Danny Welbeck is also available after recovering from a knock.

However, Sokratis is set to miss out after suffering an ankle injury while away with Greece during the international break and Petr Cech is also still recovering from a hamstring problem.

Laurent Koscielny has been stepping up his recovery from Achilles surgery but the centre-back isn’t expected to be available until next month so he remains on the sidelines along with Dinos Mavropanos.

Leicester will be without Wes Morgan after he was sent off against Everton and Demarai Gray and Matty James are out through injury.

Preferred line-up

Emery went with a 4-4-2 formation against Fulham last time out but with Ozil and Aubameyang pushing for recalls I think we’ll switch back to our usual 4-2-3-1 tonight. The back five picks itself and despite my reservations about Xhaka, he’s forming a solid partnership with Torreira so we should stick with them in midfield.

It’s going to be interesting to see what Emery does in attack. Iwobi has been excellent recently so he deserves to keep his place out wide as he offers something different to other attackers in the squad.

I’m not a fan of Ozil out wide anyway so I’d much rather see him in the middle which means Ramsey will once again have to make do with a place on the bench. Welbeck is also set to drop to the bench with Aubameyang coming in to the side.

football formations

Leicester XI: Schmeichel, Chilwell, Evans, Maguire, Amarty, Mendy, Ndidi, Pereira, Iheanacho, Maddison, Vardy

Prediction

Arsenal have never lost a home league game against Leicester and I don’t see that run ending tonight. We’re certainly not the finished article but Emery has found a winning formula and his flexible approach to tactics and formations has made a big difference this season. We’re still dodgy at the back so no doubt Leicester will get some chances but I think we’ll have far too much firepower. I’m going for Arsenal 3-1 Leicester.