Arsenal welcome Mark Hughes’ Stoke City team to the Emirates on Saturday in a game which both sides will be feeling pretty good about. Stoke have rebounded well after a slow start to the campaign and have managed to move up into a more than respectable 9th position in the Premier League following a period of very good form.

The Potters have only lost one of their last nine Premier League games winning 5 of them and drawing 3. Arsenal come into the match on the back of a 4-1 thumping of Basel in the Champions League and a 5-1 demolition of West Ham in the League with Lucas Perez and Alexis Sanchez bagging a hat-trick in each game respectively. The Gunners are of course on an unbeaten run of 13 games in the League and are looking good again after an average spell of form in November.

Examining the history of this fixture, you have to go all the way back to the 1981-82 season to find Stoke’s last away win against Arsenal. The Gunners have actually won the last 14 games in a row vs the Potters in all competitions and kept an impressive 8 clean sheets in those games. So clearly based on recent history Arsenal have to be favourites plus they boast the hottest player in the League right now in Alexis Sanchez who also happens to be the top scorer having notched an impressive 11 goals in the 14 games while adding 4 assists.

As far as selection goes it will be interesting to see if Arsene Wenger chooses to retain Lucas Perez who of course is coming of his first hat-trick for Arsenal. Perez already has 5 goals to his name in his 8 games played and looked good on the field with Sanchez so Walcott may find himself on the bench unless the boss opts to leave Iwobi out which would be hard on the youngster after his own good performance against Basel where he added the icing on the cake with the team’s 4th goal.

Whichever way Arsene Wenger decides to go, we see it being a tight game but a good one with the Gunners to come out on top courtesy of a 2-1 scoreline with Alexis Sanchez delivering the goods again.