“I Don’t Know What’s Changed” – Paul Merson Predicts Score For Arsenal vs Fulham

Sky Sports pundit Paul Merson has offered his predicted score ahead of Arsenal’s Premier League clash with Fulham and is backing the Gunners to collect all three points.

Arsenal endured a disappointing end to 2018 as we saw our 22-game unbeaten run end with defeat at Southampton, were knocked out of the Carabao Cup to Tottenham, drew at Brighton on Boxing Day before being thrashed 5-1 by Liverpool on Saturday night.

The heavy loss at Anfield brought back memories of Arsene Wenger’s tenure at the club when we’d regularly be on the receiving end of big defeats to our rivals away from home in recent years.

Merson feels it was the ‘same-old, same-old’ Arsenal on show at the weekend and says he doesn’t know what’s changed since Unai Emery took charge as he believes we could have lost half of our games during the unbeaten run.

However, Merson is still backing Arsenal to beat Fulham tomorrow as he claims his former side are ‘bullies’ who always beat the lesser teams so he’s backing us to ease to a 3-1 victory at the Emirates on Tuesday afternoon.

Writing in his column for Sky Sports, Merson said:

Arsenal vs Fulham – New Year’s Day, 3pm

The other day was typical Arsenal. I don’t know what’s changed. I know they went on that run but half of those games, they could have probably lost. Then you go to Southampton, they’re settling for a draw and end up winning the game, go to Liverpool and it was same-old, same-old. This one, I’ll go for them because… This is Arsenal. They’re flat-track bullies, they’ll beat the lesser teams all day long.

After the win over Huddersfield the other day, it was a big goal from Aleksander Mitrovic, but I watched Fulham at Newcastle too and they were solid and Newcastle never looked like scoring.

I know that attack is nowhere near Arsenal’s but they defended well and they’ll try that too here. If I was them though I’d try and have a swing, although you don’t want to be on the wrong end of six goals when it could go down to goal difference at the bottom.

MERSE SAYS: 3-1

It’s difficult to argue too much with Merson’s assertion that we looked eerily similar to how we played under Wenger against Liverpool at the weekend as we were second best all over the park and were shocking in defence.

However, let’s hope it was just a one-off result as I do think we’ve made progress under Emery – even if it’s only been slight – and like Merson, I’m backing Arsenal to get back to winning ways against Fulham tomorrow.