It’s amazing to say this as we move well into December, but Arsenal’s game against Burnley tonight is more of a relegation battle than anything else.
You have to think there’s no way that Mikel Arteta could actually guide the Gunners to relegation, but they’re having a shocking season and they are in desperate need of a victory to drag themselves back up the table.
The table is still fairly condensed so a run of wins would take Arsenal back towards European contention, while a win from Burnley would elevate them from the relegation spots for now.
It’s a game that Arsenal fans expect to win but we’ve said that plenty of times this season, so here’s a look at how Arteta is setting his team up tonight:
In many ways you can see why they’re struggling because players like Holding, Elneny and Xhaka wouldn’t be getting anywhere close to the starting XI’s for the other big teams in the league, while some of the summer signings haven’t worked out as planned either.
It’s understandable that the Arsenal fans are starting to turn against the team and the manager, but it appears that the repeated selection of Willian is the main gripe with many fans ahead of this one: