Aston Villa – Arsenal 24.11.2012

Aston Villa desperately need a win in order to escape the relegation zone, but Paul Lambert’s side are probably not too keen on facing in-form Arsenal at the moment.

The Gunners have continued to improve and they arrive at Villa Park looking for their third win in a row.

Having finished the previous league campaign just two points above the bottom three, Aston Villa needed to seriously reinforce the squad over the summer, but that is not exactly what happened. The Villans wasted a lot of their energy on luring Paul Lambert from Norwich, but most of their summer signings were pretty dubious. With Lambert surprisingly opting for duo El Ahmadi-Delph in the centre of the park, it was no wonder Villa lacked both the creative spark and tactical awareness in the opening rounds. The team have shown some improvement since Ireland, Bannan and Weimann have been given a chance to impress, but it is more than evident they still lack quality and experience to match the best sides in the league. After taking just 9 points from first 12 games, Aston Villa cannot be trusted to stop high-flying Arsenal.

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Arsenal, too, were forced to rebuild the squad during off season, but the Gunners at least did a great job in the summer transfer window, signing the likes of Cazorla, Podolski and Giroud, while the return of magnificent Jack Wilshire was similar to a big name signing. While the Gunners needed some time to start producing what is expected of them, they appear to have hit top form with the return of Wilshire and have recorded two impressive victories over Tottenham and Montpellier. With Olivier Giroud and Lukas Podolski both finding their scoring boots and Theo Walcott finally injury-free, it appears that everything is falling into place as the Gunners prepare to start their climb up the Premier League standings. It is not realistic to expect struggling Villa can stop them in their tracks.