Arsenal v Aston Villa: Aubameyang can stay hot in a goal-heavy home win

Jamie Pacheco
21 September 2019

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has been scoring for fun of late.

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Arsenal should win and their main man Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang should be among the goals but Villa are more than capable of scoring, says Jamie Pacheco.

"So we’ll take the view that Arsenal will be their own worst enemy once again and contribute to their own downfall through a mistake such as a bad back-pass or giving away a silly penalty."

Arsenal v Aston Villa
Sunday September 22, 16:30

Ceballos continues to impress, defence doesn't

Arsenal look in decent shape in terms of their squad.

Dani Ceballos certainly looks up for it and it would be no surprise, if after an eye-catching season, the move was made permanent to the North London club. Pepe will surely come good sooner rather than later, having already shown glimpses of what he can do.

There are no shortage of options in midfield as well so there's no reason why Unai Emery can't have another crack at winning the Europa League, while aiming for a top four finish in the Premier League and trying to win one of the domestic cups.

But none of that is likely to happen unless they can sort out their issues at the back. One option is to play Sead Kolasinac there as part of a back-three once the highly-rated Kieran Tierney is fit and ready to play as a wing-back on that left flank.

Villa with plenty of work to do

Sadly, we can only give Villa 4/10 for their efforts so far this season. Everyone had them as strong favourites top be the best of the promoted sides but (yes, of course it's still early days) they're currently the worst of the three, sitting in 17th place on four points.

What's somewhat worrying is they've already had quite a kind run of fixtures. If they can't beat West Ham or Bournemouth at home or get anything from a trip to Crystal Palace, do we think they'll nick points off the really tough teams?

They could do with bigger contributions from Jack Grealish. He's very much the jewel in their crown but one assist from five games and a failure to really make things happen is hurting the side. The 'ripped' Wesley also needs to start scoring goals in addition to being a physical presence in attack. He's scored just once in six matches.

What the stats say on the potential match winner

If you want to make a case for Arsenal at 1.434/9 you could point to the fact that Arsenal have not only won their past six against Villa in all competitions but conceded in just one of them.

If it was a Villa win at 8.415/2 you wanted to back up with stats, you'd mention the fact that only Man Utd and Chelsea have won more times than Villa's three since Arsenal have been at the Emirates. Both stats courtesy of Opta.

It's 5.24/1 the draw but none of the three outcomes grab our attention. Let's move on.

Arsenal's defensive woes point to a bet

It's far easier to make a good case for Arsenal conceding at least once. Only against Newcastle on the opening day did they keep a clean sheet in the league and looking at the back end of last season, they conceded in each of their last five games- three in the Europa League and two in the Premier League.

Maybe that has something to do with the fact that no side has made more errors (14) directly leading to goals than the Gunners since the start of last season. It wouldn't do them any harm to stop conceding penalties, either. It's 10 since August 2018 and four in four games this season. Opta again.

The flies in the ointment are that Villa have hardly been prolific scorers and that the visitors have had trouble scoring against Arsenal over the past few seasons. But as we've seen already, statistics can be used to paint very different pictures.

So we'll take the view that Arsenal will be their own worst enemy once again and contribute to their own downfall through a mistake such as a bad back-pass or giving away a silly penalty. It also won't have helped that they were playing on Thursday night in the Europa League although they did admittedly keep a clean sheet in that one.

Take Arsenal to win the game and both teams to score at 6/4.

Aubemayang bossing it

We think Villa should score but it's anyone's guess as to who might get it so we won't try to.

With one exception, it's not that easy predicting who might score one for Arsenal, either. Only three men have scored for Arsenal this term and one isn't playing (Alexandre Lacazette) and another (Lucas Torreira) isn't normally in the business of scoring goals at the best of times.

So that of course leaves the brilliantly prolific Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. He has five in six in the league and scored last night as well but is just 3/5 to get one here which is pretty short. So I'd rather push the boat out and go with him to score two or more. He's managed it just the once this season, last week at Watford, but we'll have few better chances than this one to make it twice.