Hello and how are you? The 3rd of January 2026 sees the Mighty Cannon make a visit to the south coast of England to do battle with Bournemouth AFC at the Vitality stadium. KO is at 5.30pm (UK time) and expected weather is partly cloudy with temps of 1° ( feels like -6° ).
So, the Arsenal go south after a rousing defeat of top-of the table challengers, Aston Villa. A victory which gave everybody a glimmer of what could be, come May. However, until then it’s a tough climb up the north face of our Premier League mountain scramble for the summit, and we start at basecamp 1 against Bournemouth. As George pointed out in the last preview, the longer we lead the pack, the more massive each game becomes, and although the Villa game gave us a bit of a swagger its important to concentrate on each game as it comes and not start dreaming of frolics in Maytime?
The Cherries are no wins in ten, although they made an impressive draw with Chelsea last time out, but Ben Gannon-Doak (thigh), Veljko Milosavljevic (knee), Tyler Adams (knee) are all AWOL and the big question mark hangs over Antoine Semenyo (transfer? could be his last game?), Lewis Cook (neck), Ryan Christie (knee).
Declan looks like he will sit this one out too ( but the Villa game underlined the depth and quality of our squad?), also Riccardo Calafiori and Cristhian Mosquera will also be absent, as will Max Dowman. Gabriel Magalhaes (cramp), I’m sure will be back, as really, he was just listening to the Cramps. And who can blame him?
Although still hung-over from their New Years party, the boys at Statto HQ handed over the facts and figures: Bournemouth have been given a 15.9% chance of winning and the Arsenal 63.4 %. Next up, we entertain our old pals Liverpool at Ashburton Grove for the late fixture on the 9th of January. So COYG!
Mills
Uther than the front 3 I would expect the same starting line up from the Villa game. It would be easy to go with Trossard and Sake again, but I feel they could be on the bench as “finishers”. Jesus and Havertz will need some minutes, so maybe we could see them sharing the 90?. I wouldn’t like to wager much on the reality of my opinion mind. The line up will tell us quite a bit about what rotation we might see from here on in. I “hope” our great squad strength is used for more than just cover for injuries, nut we will see.
Enjoy the game friends.
Pedantic George.