Arsene Wenger expects to see plenty of goals from Arsenal’s clash against Southampton on Sunday.
Wenger reckons that the Gunners’ attacking threat combined with the Saints’ means that we’re in for a bit of a goal-fest on Sunday.
“They have Charlie Austin back now, and of course they have players like Tadic, Redmond, Boufal who are all very strong offensively. They have a good technical level as a team and both side can create chances so there could be goals there.
“The result against Everton and the quality of their performance against Bournemouth [shows Southampton are back on the rise].
“I thought in the second half they always looked dangerous against Bournemouth and capable of scoring – it is true that if you look at the number of goals they scored and the quality of their last two performances, it looks like they are coming back to a much more dangerous team.”
It’s probably slightly concerning that Wenger’s admitting that he thinks Southampton will probably score a few goals against us but I’m just going to brush past that.
The Saints currently sit 11th in the Premier League table having scored 15 goals in 15 games. They’ve shipped 18. Therefore, I’m not sure why Wenger predicts it’ll be a high-scoring game. They’ve only won one of their last five league games so perhaps he’s just being polite.
In contrast, Arsenal have scored 29 and conceded 19, and while we lost 3-1 to Manchester United last weekend, we’re still playing pretty well at the moment.
Of course, we do have to take into account our record when visiting St. Mary’s. For some reason, when Southampton turn it on, they seem to be really well-equipped to beat the Gunners, even if we did defeat them back in May.
For example, remember when they beat us 2-0 on their turf in 2015 and then thrashed us 4-0 on Boxing Day later that same year?
Hopefully, this won’t be the case this weekend.