Arsenal vs Fulham

Premier League title hopefuls Arsenal entertain cross-town rivals Fulham in an exciting fixture at the Emirates Stadium.

Arsenal set the tone for another ambitious campaign with a Community Shield triumph over Manchester City before kicking things off in the Premier League with a hard-earned 2-1 home win over Nottingham Forest. Martin Odegaard’s second-half penalty fired the ‘Gunners’ to a narrow 1-0 victory at Crystal Palace last time out, maintaining their perfect league start ahead of another all-London match-up. Mikel Arteta’s men are odds-on favorites to open a new Premier League season with three straight wins for the second year running, having not lost any of the 31 previous home encounters against Fulham (W25, D6). Moreover, the London giants have only lost once in their last nine home league outings (W7, D1), going down 3-0 to Brighton in mid-May.

On the other hand, Fulham’s 2023/24 Premier League campaign was off to a promising start as they ousted Everton 1-0 at Goodison Park, setting their sights on back-to-back away league wins ‘to nil.’ However, Marco Silva’s team failed to build on their opening-day triumph as Brentford swept them aside 3-0 last weekend, extending their underwhelming run against fellow London rivals to seven consecutive games without winning (D2, L5). Aleksandar Mitrovic’s move to Al-Hilal in midweek added insult to injury, casting doubt on the visitors’ bid to improve on last season’s 10th-place finish. Interestingly, none of Fulham’s nine previous away league games have ended level (W4, L5), with seven of those nine results yielding a single-goal margin at full-time.