English Premier League Preview: Arsenal vs Hull City

Arsenal vs Hull City

After impressive victory at the weekend against struggling Dragons at the Cardiff City stadium, the Gunners host Hull City Tigers this midweek. Arsenal sit at top of the table with 4 points lead over London rivals Chelsea as Hull City tries to cement their place in the top half of the table with 16 points after the astonishing performance against Liverpool which saw Tigers beating the Reds for the first time in 17 attempts.

Arsenal have met Hull just 5 times since 1988, winning on 4 occasions. However, the Tigers did record a famous 2-1 win at the Emirates in September 2008 in just their sixth Barclays Premier League match. And Arsenal’s last Samurai, Nicklas Bendtner has scored in 2 of his 3 Premier League appearances against Hull City.

Hull City will be relishing the challenge of facing Arsenal just after the morale boosting 3-1 victory over Liverpool at the KC Stadium 3 days ago. Steven Gerrard equalized after Livermore opened the account for the Tigers but second half goal from Meyler and an own goal from Skrtel in the last minutes secured the 3 points for the Steve Bruce’s side.

Couple of points were dropped by the top teams such as Manchester United, Liverpool, Spurs but Chelsea & Manchester City won comfortably to pile the pressure on the league leaders Arsenal. After the Hull game, the Gunners face Everton, Napoli, Manchester City and Chelsea before the Christmas this period would decide whether Arsenal are en route to glory this season.

TEAM Performance:

Arsenal’s home form form is exactly the opposite of the away form of the Hull City. Arsenal are excellent at the Emirates Stadium bar the Aston Villa game while Hull City are awful on the road as we can see from the table.

	Played	Won	Drawn	Lost	GF	GA
Arsenal at Home	6	5	0	1	13	5
Hull City away from Home	6	1	0	5	5	13

TEAM News:

• Arsenal: At the weekend, Arsenal started the same team that played against Southampton 2 weeks ago. Apart from Bacary Sagna who misses the tomorrow’s game with a tight hamstring everyone else is fit. Carl Jenkinson is likely to replace the Frenchman. Lukas Podolski will be back in normal training after tomorrow’s game. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Abou Diaby and Yaya Sanogo are the long term absentees.
• Hull City: No new injury concerns for the Tigers. Curtis Davies is suspended for the game after picking up his fifth yellow card at the weekend. James Chester, who was on the bench against Liverpool, is in contention for a return to the starting line-up. Matty Fryatt also returns to the matchday squad having returned to the club following a loan spell at Sheffield Wednesday.

Last Corresponding Fixture:

• Arsenal 3-0 Hull City
• Saturday, 19 December, 2009
• Emirates Stadium
• Goal Scorers: Abou Diaby, Eduardo, Denilson.

Last 4 Meetings:

	Played	Arsenal Win	Draw	Hull City Win
Emirates Stadium	2	1	0	1
KC Stadium	2	2	0	0

OPTA Stats:

• The Gunners have scored five headed goals from just seven headers on target in the Premier League this season.
• Mesut Ozil has provided the most assists in the Premier League this season (6).
• The Gunners have kept five clean sheets in their last six games in all competitions, conceding just one goal in the other match (0-1 at Man Utd).
• Wojciech Szczesny has the best saves to shots ratio (81 per cent) in the Premier League this season (min 16 shots on target faced).
• Arsenal have won eight of the last nine matches against the Tigers in all competitions (W8 D0 L1).
• Hull City have won just one of their last 30 Premier League away games (W1 D7 L22).

MATCH Officials:

• Referee: Andre Marriner.
• Assistants: G Beswick, M Scholes.
• Fourth Official: L Probert.