Arsenal FC - Tottenham

After the thrilling London derby between Arsenal and Fulham last week, there is one more to come for Arsenal, but this time the opponent is Tottenham. If there is one thing that we can state for sure, it is that both teams play an attractive football as they score a lot, but often conceide a lot goals. In their previous last 6 games, both teams have kept only one clean sheet. All the football fans are certainly expecting this match to end with many goals and great doze of emotions. Since 2009, all the games between Arsenal and Tottenham in the Premier League, have ended with at least three goals scored.

There are no suspended players for both teams, however, Arsene Wenger and Andre Villa-Boash can not rely on a large number of players due to injuries. The absence of key players for both teams makes this encounter even more unpredictable and intriguing. There are 8 players in the injury list for Arsenal and there are: Aaron Ramsey, Gervinho, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Lukasz Fabianski, Kieran Gibbs, Diaby, Wojciech Szczesny, Tomas Rosicky. On 11/03/2012 Ramsey was again added to the list of injured players, because of a pain in the groin/pelvis, but it is unclear when he will be fit to play. We can all hope that this will happen on Saturday against Tottenham. For Spurs the injured footballers are: Ranieri, Moussa Dembele, Benoit Assou-Ekotto, Younes Kabul and Scott Parker.

The main weakness in the Arsenal performance is undoubtedly the poor reaction against counter attacks. Wenger should take this problem into consideration, as the Gunners` defence will face the fast Gareth Bale and Aaron Lennon. Individual errors in the Arsenal defense are also quite common, and probably such will be immediately punished by the experienced Jermain Defoe and Clint Dempsey. While defending counter attacks is Arsenal's weakness, Tottenham's great strength this season is precicely the counter attacks.

Attacking down the left is one of Arsenal`s strengths as Podolski and Gervinho create many opportunities in this area. Nevertheless, Gervinho will probably miss the game. Villa-Boash on the other hand, has not much of a choice in the right zone and probably Lennon and Walker will take over the task of stopping Arsenal`s dangerous left zone. Arsenal players easily maintain control of the ball in the opponent's half, which is the main style of play of the team, but will Arsenal suffer from its own style of play this Saturday. Tottenham players are good at stealing the ball from the opposition and quickly organizing counter attacks. So, it is not surprising that the most goals scored so far for the team have come from counter attacks.

The main weakness of Tottenham is not managing to keep the lead. Quite often, the Spurs get ahead in the score, but afterwards lose the game. This was the case in the last round in the match against Manchester City. There were similar turn of events for the Spurs in the matches against Norwich and Chelsea.