Southampton vs Arsenal: Preview and Prediction

Thursday 25th June 2020

Southampton vs Arsenal: Preview and Prediction

England Premier League
Thursday 25th June 2020
Kick off at 6pm BST
Venue: St Mary's Stadium

Match Preview:

We should be in for an exciting game when these two teams come together on Thursday night. Southampton enjoyed a relatively easy 3-0 win over Norwich away in their first game after the restart, and with 37 points they can count themselves as almost safe now.

The Saints are currently in 14th place and 3 points behind their opponents but even a win wouldn’t take them past them because of goal difference, but it would pretty much cement their survival for next season.

Before the break Southampton actually had the worst home record in the league where from 15 games they had lost 9 of them. Their last match here ended in a 1-0 defeat against Newcastle and they have lost 3 out of their last four games at home.

Arsenal have had a nightmare restart where they lost against Manchester City- in truth that could be accepted but they also had David Luiz sent off in that game. In their next match, against Brighton, the Gunners were leading 1-0 but blew that and lost 2-1. Bernd Leno was also carried off injured and a scuffle broke out at the final whistle, in short this has been a bad week for Arsenal.

Yet the good news is that despite losing two games they have only dropped one position to 10th. The bad news is that any faint hopes of Champions League football for next season look over as 4th place and Arsenal is now bridged by 11 points.

The Gunners could well bemoan that all of their games so far have been away from home, and away games seems to have been their achilles heel for the past few seasons. The club have won just twice on the road in this campaign from 15 games.

 

Team News:

Southampton: Moussa Djenepo will miss this game as he is still serving a 3 game ban carried over from March. Shane Long will be touch and go with a muscle injury but he is training again and will be assessed

Arsenal: Cedric has a facial injury and will miss this game. Bernd Leno is ruled out with a knee injury. David Luiz serves his final suspension game and will miss this one. Sokratis is out until at least July with a thigh injury. Lucas Torreira won’t be back until July with an ankle injury and Granit Xhaka also has an ankle injury and is set to miss the next 10 days at least

 

Southampton vs Arsenal Head to Head:

Southampton have only beaten Arsenal once in the last 8 meetings.

Earlier this season in the reverse fixture the game ended 2-2.

4 of the last 5 league meetings has seen both teams to score.

 

Southampton vs Arsenal Prediction:

A casual onlooker would believe this is a straightforward win for Arsenal, but it is clear that not all is right with Mikel Arteta’s team. This is unfortunate because even though Arteta started his job with the Gunners fairly slowly he was putting a run of games together that seemed to show that this squad has some promise. Here’s the problem with Arsenal, they can’t play away from home (even with no fans) and they can’t keep a lead. Time and again Arsenal have been looking to win a game this season and been pegged back.

Player for player one could argue that Arsenal have the better team, but there is no reason to believe that the Saints will be lacking any confidence. And after their win over Norwich and looking at how Arsenal have played in their first two matches since the restart it would be fair to say that Southampton will enter this game with optimism.

Get on Danny Ings to score - he was in good form this season and looks to be on the mark given that he has continued his scoring doing so in Southampton’s last game.

 

Southampton vs Arsenal Betting Tips:

Asian handicap (0.0 Southampton) at 1.90

Both teams to score at 1.61

Anytime goalscorer: Danny Ings at 2.00

Top Football Tipster logo

© Copyright topfootballtipster.com 2019