West Ham will travel to Emirates this Saturday as both side will be eager to get their first win after a difficult start to their Premier League campaigns.
The post Wenger era are yet to pick up their first point of the season after the defeat to Manchester City in the opening day and another one to Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.
Like Unai Emery, Manuel Pellegrini is also looking for that base to kick-start his Premier League career on a high.
When & Where?
Arsenal will welcome West Ham United at Emirates with kick-off schedule 3 p.m. BST/10 a.m. ET on Saturday, August 25.
Team News
Arsenal are without Ainsley Maitland Niles, Saed Kolasniac, Carl Jenkinson and Laurent Koscielny due to injury. Mateo Guendozi is likely to be involved once again, but who plays alongside him is a bigger mystery. Lucas Torreira could be in line to make his first start for Arsenal.
Hector Bellerin is likely to keep his place, while Aaron Ramsey will be hoping for a starting spot after being dropped to the bench against Chelsea.
For the visitors Caroll, Lanzini and Reid will continue to serve sidelines followed by back problem for Noble. Obiang or Sanchez are expected to take his place for The Hammers.
West Ham will visit Emirates with three former Arsenal players in their book in Jack Wilshere, Lucas Perez and Lukasz Fabianski.
Manager Saying
Unai Emery (on West Ham): In our process, we are going 38 matches [in total] against all the teams. Whether you are playing against Manchester City, it’s the same as if you’re playing against West Ham on Saturday. There are three points on this game. It’s clear that every game demands different things tactically. After the first two matches, we have two defeats and we need to win this match against West Ham.
The difficulty is in this game because West Ham are a good team with good players and a good coach. They know the Premier League very well and they have a lot of new players. We are thinking in our way and about our work to create our ideas and our system on Saturday with our supporters at the Emirates. I think it’s very important to show them a better performance than in the two first matches. We are preparing well, I am feeling well when I look at the players in training every day.
Manuel Pellegrini (on watching Unai Emery in Arsenal’s dugout): It will be strange to look across to the Arsenal dugout and see a manager other than Arsene Wenger sitting there. I don’t know if they needed a change or not, but I know that what Arsene Wenger did in Arsenal was unbelievable, to stay 20 years in the same club.
Fans always want to win titles and maybe he couldn’t win the Premier League in the last years, but he was always a club that was fighting in the Premier League every year and was fighting for the cup and fighting for the title for at least part of the season.
So, I think every fan of Arsenal must be happy with the work that Arsene Wenger did there but, if the Board decided that Arsene must finish that work, that’s their decision.
Now, Arsene has gone and Arsenal have Unai Emery as their manager.
Unai has a lot of experience in different countries and not only Spain because he went to Russia and he went to France. He won a lot of titles with Sevilla in the Europa League, so I think he is a manager whose teams always play good football and I think he will do great work at Arsenal.
It’s not normal that Arsenal start the season by losing their first two games, but the pressure, at least for me, is always on winning or losing, and the pressure must be the same on every game if you want to have a successful season.
Both teams cannot win for the moment and we will see which will come out of that and which will continue losing on Saturday.
Predicted Line-up
Arsenal XI: Cech, Bellerin, Mustafi, Sokratis, Monreal, Guendozi, Torreira, Ozil, Mkhitaryan, Lacazette, Aubameyang
West Ham XI: Fabianski, Masuaku, Diop, Ogbonna, Zabaleta, Obiang, C. Sanchez, Wilshere, Yarmolenko, Arnautovic, Anderson
