Arsenal vs Aston Villa preview | Latest team news | Expected line-up’s | Prediction

Arsenal will be desperate to get back to winning ways in the Premier League when they take on Aston Villa at the Emirates on Sunday afternoon. 

We head into the game having taken just two points from our last three league games with Unai Emery coming under scrutiny for the way we capitulated to throw away a two-goal lead against Watford last weekend.

A weakened side bounced back with an impressive 3-0 victory over Eintracht Frankfurt in the Europa League on Thursday night but the Arsenal boss knows he has to beat Villa at home today or the pressure will be back on his shoulders.

The season may only be five games old but Arsenal are already seven points off leaders Liverpool and we sit eighth in the table – level on points with fourth placed Tottenham – so it’s important we get back on track with three points against newly-promoted Aston Villa.

Team news

Arsenal will continue to be without Alexandre Lacazette as he remains on the sidelines with an ankle injury so Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang will once again lead the line up front with Nicolas Pepe offering support.

Hector Bellerin and Kieran Tierney made their injury comebacks with the U23s on Friday night so they are edging closer to being involved again but this game will obviously come too soon.

Rob Holding could be in the squad after recovering from a knee injury while the likes of Bernd Leno, Sokratis, Ainsley Maitland-Niles, Dani Ceballos, Matteo Guendouzi and Mesut Ozil are expected to be recalled.

As for Villa, they will have Trezeguet back from suspension while Matt Targett could be back in the squad but Jonathan Kodjia and James Chester remain sidelined.

Expected line-ups

Prediction

Arsenal 3-1 Aston Villa: We might not be in the best form but we should be confident of seeing-off Aston Villa as we have an excellent record against them having won each of the last six meetings. However, the Arsenal players have to stop giving away cheap goals as no Premier League side has made more errors [14] leading to goals than we have and we’ve conceded a penalty in each of our last three league games.

No doubt we’ll allow Villa plenty of chances and they have the ability to cause us some problems but Arsenal should have too much firepower in the end. I’m going for a 3-1 win with Pepe to get his first goal for the club.