Premiership leaders Chelsea take on fifth-placed Arsenal in the London derby at Stamford Bridge this afternoon.
Luiz Felipe Scolari’s side will look to clinch full points against Arsene Wenger’s Gunners, who will be out to avoid third successive league defeat following their losses against Aston Villa and Manchester City.
The Blues can ill afford any slip-up with the title race neck and neck as Liverpool, who have same number of points as the west London club, take on West Ham United on Monday. Last weekend, both joint-leaders were involved in separate goalless draws.
Good news for Arsenal though, Chelsea have a long list of injury-enforced absentees with Juliano Belletti (ankle), Michael Essien (knee), Ricardo Carvalho (knee) and Franco di Santo (hamstring) out with Joe Cole likely to be forced to miss the game due to an ankle injury against Bordeaux in Champions League 1-1 draw on Wednesday. Didier Drogba, who seems to have a knack of scoring against Arsenal, is banned.
Arsenal, who won 1-0 against Dynamo Kiev in midweek, are set to be boosted by the return of Emmanuel Adebayor, Bacary Sagna (both ankle) and Samir Nasri (knee). However, Abou Diaby (abdominal strain), Kolo Toure (calf), Theo Walcott (shoulder) and Emmanuel Eboue (knee) are sidelined.
Gunners tactician Arsene Wenger has insisted that his side can beat the west-Londoners, who lost their unbeaten run in the league at home earlier in the season when they were beaten by Liverpool.
Wenger said:
“We are written off. You cannot say when you are 10 points behind that we are favourites to win the championship, but you can say as well the only way we can get back into it is to believe we can.
“That is why we want to go into this game on Sunday by believing we can beat them because we know we can. That is all you want your players to do.”
Predicted Starting XI
Almunia
Sagna – Gallas – Silvestre – Clichy
Denilson – Fabregas (c) – Song – Nasri – van Persie
Adebayor
Match Prediction: Chelsea 3-0 Arsenal
Gooner Talk will provide live coverage of this Premier League clash on GoonerTalkTV. Post-match highlights will be avaliable at midnight for those of you who were unable to watch the game.
Leave your views and predictions of this evening’s game in the comments section below.
47 Comments 
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47 Comments on "Match Preview: Chelsea v Arsenal (Premier League)"
3-0 wtf, are you an arsenal supporter or what? okay it is your opinion, but come on, on a chelsea site they wud be saying 1-o or 2-0 why the £$££ are you saying 3-0 dnt get you man, but when we bang them 2-1 ill be cmin starit here and sendin a whole load of lool lol lol’s aimed at you. lool
hahahaha
”Chelsea 3-0 Arsenal”
Talk about pessimistic.. I’m not going to say anything though as I won’t see it as that surprising if it did happen.
hahah
hahahahah
3-0? 3 fucking nil!!
Mate UR A MUG!!
You a Spurs fan in disguise!!!
ahhh here ,, some arsenal fan you are , ive a sneeky feeling arsenal will nick it at the death
you are a wanker
It’s his opinion. Everyone are entitled to their own opinion, which means Chris is also. It could well be 3-0, no-one knows.
I, in my opinion, also think it will be 3-0. So fuck you all.
pete, spot on mate 3-0 to arsenal….nice one, but why say ‘fuck you all’?
To Chelsea, poo jabber.
pete, right, so i presume you are a chelski supporter….so it’s still ok…bit sad you spending your afternoons on an arsenal blog
I’m not a chelski supporter.. I think we’re guna get smashed. Like iJemz said, It’s Chris’ blog and it’s his opinion in the articles.. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion.
yeh everyone is entitled to an opinion, it just pisses real arsenal supporters off when idiots like you & the auther of the blog come on slagging the club we love off.
who in their right mind, as a supporter, thinks we are going to get smashed.
i don’t!! what about the rest of the ‘real’ supporters?
Real supporters? I’ve been a season ticket holder at Highbury and Emirates for 8 years now.. Is that real enough for you? Don’t come on here calling me an idiot, you’re probably a little teenager
and ure probably a 40 year old grown man with the sense of a 5 year old.
Shut up Pete you bellend and get out of Chris’ arse. Season ticket holder for 8 years? Shut up you twonk. Keep the faith you pleb
if goonerchris wrote this then i would be surprised, i dont think it is him. but if it was, then ‘gooner’chris my ass, spudchris then…. but trust me he’ll come here and say it was not him, ive gt faith.
season ticket for 30 years you little twat….if you really are a season ticket holder i’m surprised you’ve lasted this long without someone kicking the shit out of you, with an attitude like yours! you are a disgrace to the badge & club.
we do not need supporters like you.
why does wenger persist with song! every time i see him his positioning is poor and his distribution is weak.
Almunia
Sagna – Gallas – Silvestre – Clichy
Denilson – Fabregas (c) – Song – Nasri – van Persie
Adebayor
Djourou for Silvestre, sorry^^
Good luck boys, about to start.
COME ON YOU GUNNERS
Wenger go and buy a fucking new CB AND DM ffs….
we keep conceding sloppy goals week after week, but why why why is denilson on the wing?? we have the makings of a good team but song in CM and denilson as a winger mean that midfield will always be bad, i feel sorry for cesc..still 2-1 arsenal COME ON ARSENAL
Like some people have said, it’s my own opinion, and based on recent matches I feel it will be a thrashing.
I stopped watching at 85 minutes I was scared about Arsenal conceding.
Someone tell me the score please. =[
NEVERMIND ARSENAL WON! 😀
ijemz
2;1 to arsenal
Wat crisis?? =)
YESSSSSSSS!!!
Prediction: Arsenal 0-2 Man United
Prediction: Chelsea 3-0 Arsenal
I’ll carry on with these pessimistic predictions thank you very much. 😀
When Van Persie scored his second goal my dad went crazy. XD
HAHA – nice one Chris! GO YOU GUNNERS!
what no bottle gooner chris….you remove my last comment because it shows you up for what you are?
i’ll say it again….you are a disgrace.
we do not need supporters like you.
ref your earlier excuses, i’m entitled to my opinion
seee, 2-1 to the arsenal just like i said!! WOOOOOOOOO
hahahaha im happy with ur prediction plz always predict like this so that i can hahahahahhahahahahahhahaha…………n arsenal will win to. next time onwards dont u ever predict arsenal win. because if u do then arsenal loses. so dont try to be the burden ok. hahahhahahahahhahahahahha
Alf, your last comment went to the spam filter so I deleted it.
Your opinion counts obviously
Do you think I care? I predicted wrong, and Arsenal won. I will continue to do the same throughout the season. 🙂
WTF! you look down on arsenal too much. For that you deserve F**K! If miss once, maybe no luck, if miss predict twice mean you suck and dont ever predict match again you f**king coward if you delete this.!
hahahaha…
btw..good prediction chris..
i think the squad read your blog b4 they went to the pitch..
they said..”OK look, Gooner Chris is underestimating US..let’s go out there & prove he was totally wrong”..
LOL!!
I’ll continue my match predictions, it seems to be working very well, and with this kind of response, it’s quite intriguing. 😉
What a schmuck whoever predicted this, i wonder what humble pie tastes like? a little sour i bet
Humble Pie? Hahahaha.
NICE
Gooner Chris, you muppet mate! please carry on with your so called predictions…lol