With the international break done and dusted, Premier League action returns on Saturday (5.30pm UK) when we head to the south coast to face Bournemouth.
Our away days in 2024 have been memorable. We haven’t lost any of our 12 league fixtures on the road, trailing for just 13 minutes and keeping nine clean sheets. That marks our best away run in the competition since August 2009, and should we extend that by beating the Cherries, it will be our 2,000th top-flight victory – with only Liverpool above us.
More importantly, that scenario would see the Reds below us in the table as we could hit top spot on Saturday night, providing us with a timely boost as we embark on another run of seven games in 22 days fighting on three fronts.
Iraola’s indifferent start
The Cherries enter Gameweek 8 in 13th position, having won two of their seven league matches this term. A positive start yielded five points from their first three, which included a stunning late comeback to score three times after the 87th minute to beat Everton.
Losses to Chelsea and Liverpool stalled that momentum, but they cruised past Southampton by a 3-1 scoreline in their last encounter at the Vitality Stadium, with £40 million man Evanilson scoring his first goal and Antoine Semenyo netting his third of the campaign. However, a 1-0 loss at Leicester City two weeks ago was a disappointing way to enter the international break.
Taking last season’s late slump into account, Bournemouth have won just two of their last 10 league games, and they haven’t beaten an opponent in the top half since December. The Cherries have however lost just four of their last 17 home league games, which came at the hands of Liverpool, Manchester City and Chelsea.
What the managers say
Arteta: “They are very well coached and they are super intense, really competitive and a clear idea as to how they want to do it. They should have had different results in my opinion, especially against the big teams and away from home. They’re going to be a big challenge and we’ll have to be at our best tomorrow.”
Every word of Mikel’s pre-Bournemouth presser
Iraola: “Sometimes it’s best not to look at every statistic when you face this kind of opposition. You have to respect them but maybe not so much, to try to focus on the things we can do to hurt them. We’ve created less against them in the past season, so we haven’t been the team we want to be against them. It’s a challenge for us.”
Team news
Bukayo Saka, Thomas Partey and Gabriel Martinelli all dropped out of their national team squads during the international break for treatments, but Mikel Arteta said that none of them have suffered serious injuries.
Kai Havertz and Jurrien Timber missed Germany and Holland’s games with issues, while Ben White has been out for three weeks with a groin problem. Kai could be in contention to play against Bournemouth.
Martin Odegaard (ankle), Oleksandr Zinchenko (calf), Takehiro Tomiyasu (knee) and Kieran Tierney (hamstring) remain out.
Neto is ineligible to play against his parent club.
As for the hosts, Tyler Adams has been out all season so far following back surgery. However, he is closing in on a first-team return. The same goes for Milos Kerkez, who has trained this week and could be available for Saturday.
