After throwing away a 3-0 lead at home to Anderlecht in the Champions League on Tuesday night, Arsenal travel to Swansea City on Sunday hoping to clear their heads and regain their focus for their domestic challenge.
In this fixture last season, played at the end of September, Arsenal extended their lead at the top of the Premier League to two points, with goals from Serge Gnabry and Aaron Ramsey enough to see the Gunners to victory, despite a late surge by the Swans, Ben Davies scoring the home side’s only goal. With Spurs and Chelsea drawing and losses to the Manchester clubs, the AFC faithful were treated to an end-of-the-month present on top of the table.
Despite substantial injuries to the midfield and forward line, this result extended Arsenal’s Club record of consecutive away wins in all competitions to 12 and equalled the Club record of eight in the Premier League, originally set in the 2001-02 title-winning campaign.
To see how AFC fans may be thinking about this game, we looked at the Beat Your Manager! Fantasy Football data from this fixture last season, to see what players were picked for the lineup last year.
Beat Your Manager! Fantasy Football is a game similar to “Football Manager”, but applied to live football, where you manage your favourite Club and pick lineups, bench, formations and substitutions, all in real-time. When fans play the game, the Beat Your Manager team can measure the popularity of different players, by looking at how frequently they are selected for the starting lineup, substitutes bench or not selected at all.
The app ran for the 2013/4 EPL season and is currently inactive while the developers are creating the revised version – we’ll keep you posted on when it’s going to re-launch but for now you can take a look at their Facebook page – https://www.facebook.com/beatyourmanager and/or follow them on Twitter – https://twitter.com/beatyourmanager
Formation: A solid 4-4-2 the choice for Arsenal fans
38 per cent of Arsenal fans opted for a solid 4-4-2 formation for this game, with the next-most popular formation a more attacking 4-3-3, selected by a much lower portion of Gunners, only 15 per cent.
Goalkeeper: Szczęsny your only man yet again
Wojciech Szczęsny was the fans’ obvious choice in goal; his perfect 100 per cent popularity rating making him jointly Arsenal’s most popular player. Lukasz Fabiański was the clear-choice for backup keeper with Gunners fans, but this measured popularity wasn’t enough to keep him at the Emirates; his move to Swansea City currently paying off in regular first team football and it will be interesting to see if the Polish keeper is able to exact any revenge over his former team by helping his new club to a home win over Wenger’s men.
Defence: Perfect harmony between fans and Wenger on the back four
Per Mertesacker was Arsenal’s most popular defender, on an 89 per cent rating making him the club’s 6th-most popular player. Mertesacker was closely followed by Kieran Gibbs and Bacary Sagna, on identical lineup (87 per cent) and bench fan ratings, while Laurent Koscielny was slightly further behind with fans, on a still-respectable 74 per cent. After Koscielny, Carl Jenkinson (50 per cent) was the only other Arsenal defender to register any sort of respectable score with fans. Arsène Wenger agreed with the fans on all four defenders, making it a rare moment of perfect harmony between Manager and the Emirates faithful. Koscielny will miss this year’s fixture due to an Achilles injury, while Sagna is now at Manchester City. New boy Mathieu Debuchy is out with an ankle injury so expect to see Calum Chambers lining up on Sunday to give Wenger additional options in defence.
Midfield: Midfield injury woes the story this year and last
As for the Sunderland game, midfield injuries hit the club hard for this fixture last season, with Abou Diaby, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Santi Cazorla and Tomáš Rosický all out. Mesut Özil was Arsenal’s most popular midfielder, his 98 per cent fan rating making him the Club’s 3rd-most popular player, putting him just ahead of goalscorer Ramsey, on 96 per cent. Mikel Arteta took the 3rd midfielder spot with fans on 89 per cent, ahead of Jack Wilshere with a still-respectable 78 per cent fan rating. After Wilshere, Arsenal’s midfielders plummeted in popularity with fans; Theo Walcott the next-most popular, on a meagre 35 per cent. Wenger agreed with fans on Özil, Ramsey and Wilshere, but chose to start Mathieu Flamini (33 per cent fan rating) ahead of Arteta. Perhaps due to the lengthy injury list in attack, Wenger also fielded Serge Gnabry (only 2 per cent fan rating) in an advanced attacking role, the German rewarding the Manager with the opening goal and a sterling performance throughout. Diaby will again miss this fixture due to a calf injury, while Arteta and goalscorer Gnabry are also out. Oxlade-Chamberlain, Santi Cazorla and Rosický are all available and Wenger can now call on the attacking talents of Alexis Sánchez this season. Expect more goals from midfield!
Forwards: Giroud top of the heap
Olivier Giroud was jointly (with Szczęsny) Arsenal’s most popular player for this match, with a perfect 100 per cent approval from Gunners fans. With Lukas Podolski and Yaya Sanogo out injured, Nicklas Bendtner was chosen by fans to partner the Frenchman upfront, on the recommendation of only 20 per cent, just barely ahead of Chuba Akpom, on the same lineup rating but with lower numbers of fans voting him to the bench. Wenger went with Giroud as a lone striker, instead partnering him with Gnabry in a support attacking role. This year, Giroud is out injured, but Podolski and Sanogo are both available with new signing Danny Welbeck also providing an additional option upfront and is likely to get a start along with other new man Alexis Sanchez.
Cheers to BeatYourManager.com for the data and analysis to complement our own take on things. Check out other stats from last year’s game in the infographics available on our Facebook Page. We should be looking for a good result in this match as even though we are playing Swansea at the Livberty Stadium, in the last 5 matches we have won 3 and drawn 2 and the last time we lost to the Swans was back in December of 2012 when we were beaten 2-0 at the Emirates.