Bournemouth vs Arsenal preview, team news, odds and prediction

Arsenal will be looking to continue their excellent start to the season when they take on Bournemouth at the Vitality Stadium on Saturday evening.

After a superb pre-season, the Gunners have taken that form into the new 2022/23 Premier League campaign. Mikel Arteta’s side opened up the season with an impressive 2-0 win at Crystal Palace before beating Leicester City 4-2 in a thriller at the Emirates Stadium last weekend.

Arsenal sit level on points with champions Manchester City at the top of the table as the only two sides with 100 per cent records so far, so Arteta will be hoping to maintain that form with another win on Saturday.

Odds

The north Londoners are the heavy pre-match favourites for the match with bookmakers offering odds of 2/5 on an Arsenal victory. Using a Parimatch welcome offer may lower your initial outlay if you decide to bet on the game, so it’s worth looking into to reduce your risk.

Bournemouth are regarded as the 7/1 underdogs but they’ll be quietly confident of causing an upset on home soil this weekend after a solid start to life back in the top flight.

Following their promotion from the Championship last season, the Cherries kicked off their Premier League campaign with an impressive 2-0 win over Aston Villa. They were then brought back down to earth with a 4-0 defeat to Man City the following week, so manager Scott Parker will be hoping to bounce back with a positive result this weekend.

Team news

Arsenal were boosted by the return of Emile Smith Rowe and Takehiro Tomiyasu last week. The pair came off the bench to make their first appearances of the season following injury issues, so they’ll be pushing to start on Saturday.

Summer signing Fabio Vieira also stepped-up his recovery from a foot injury that he was carrying when he arrived from Porto in the summer. The midfielder featured for the U21s on Wednesday to build up his fitness, so he could be back in the first team squad this weekend.

As for Bournemouth, they’ll continue to be without the services of David Brooks as he’s still recovering from an injury that he sustained in pre-season. Joseph Rothwell is also out with a thigh injury while Ryan Fredericks is also still out with a calf problem.

Dominic Solanke will be handed a late fitness test on an ankle injury, while Jordan Zemura is out with covid.

Prediction

Arsenal should be high on confidence after their excellent start while Bournemouth will be desperate to bounce back from their mauling by City, so this should be an interesting game. However, in the end, Arsenal will have too much quality and we expect them to ease to victory at the Vitality Stadium this weekend. Bournemouth 1-3 Arsenal