The title race is over, Manchester City are too good and hold too big a lead now to slip up. The interest is in the race for the other three Champions League spots and it is any 3 from the other big 5 clubs. Chelsea can move second and into pole position with all three points tonight, but will remain third regardless, a point would keep them seven ahead of 6th placed Arsenal. The Gunners are also six points off 4th placed Liverpool and have to find a way to stay in touch, defeat this evening would be a bit of a disaster and they can ill afford to slip out of contention at this early stage. The simple truth is that this game is more important to Arsenal.

 

 

However, they could be missing us to six starters in Laurent Koscielny ,Sead Kolasinac ,Santi Cazorla, Olivier Giroud, Nacho Monreal and Mesut Ozil and Arsene Wenger said late yesterday, that only Koscielny and Ozil had a chance of playing, but that he and his medical team were pessimistic about both. They seem bad losses for a Gunners defence who have already given up at least three goals in 4 of 6 starts against fellow top 6 teams. They did keep a clean sheet in a 0-0 draw at Stamford Bridge, but with the two K's and Monreal in the starting eleven.

 

Chelsea come into this not only having had an extra 24 hours recovery time and no travel to deal with, but having rested both Eden Hazard and Cesc Fabregas in the 5-0 win over Stoke City on Saturday (Arsenal played in the Midlands on Sunday). The Blues are probably still smarting from a 3-0 defeat here early last season, but have dominated this series previously. The visitors are the fresher and with far more options and are possibly out for revenge, Arsenal need the result more, but are even more vulnerable than usual defensively. They have conceded five goals in five halves of football without Monreal this season and won 1/5 (Newcastle) when Kolasinac is sidelined, two of those starts were against a top 6 team (both Liverpool games) and they conceded 7 goals across the 180 minutes. I suspect Arsenal need to score twice to get anything out of this encounter and we should see goals.

 

This is also likely to be fiery, with plenty of history between the clubs there have been six red cards in the last seven meetings, with Chelsea having a player sent off in each of the last three.