On Sunday, Arsenal travel to Craven Cottage, on the hunt for a ninth straight victory in all competitions.
Arsenal kept their winning run going in Azerbaijan on Thursday, defeating Qarabag 3-0. Confidence is certainly high at the club right now, even if the performances are yet to prove as impressive as the results.
This weekend they take on Fulham, in their final Premier League match before yet another international break. Let’s have a look at our predicted team for the clash.
2Midfield
My feeling is that Aaron Ramsey will drop to the bench, for multiple reasons. Firstly, and most obviously, his contract situation is hanging over the team a bit at the moment. It might be better to keep him out of the spotlight, at least until after the international break.
Also, he hasn’t actually been playing very well in the number 10 role. Mesut Özil is a much better fit. Then there’s the fact Ramsey missed out on the trip to Baku and the training sessions there due to his wife’s pregnancy, although he is back with the squad now.
All that might be overlooked in favour of Emery publicly showing faith in the midfielder. I wouldn’t recommend that approach though.
Assuming Özil starts in the middle, he’ll have Granit Xhaka and Lucas Torreira behind him, as usual. Matteo Guendouzi and Mohamed Elneny started in mid-week, Ainsley Maitland-Niles isn’t quite back yet.