- Arsenal have won their last 3 matches.
- Aston Villa have lost 4 of their last 5 games.
- The last 3 head-to-heads stand at 1 win each and 1 draw.
Villa Park looks set for another Arsenal win
2nd placed Arsenal, 3 points from 1 game and second in the 2026/2027 Premier League table, are set to face bottom-placed Aston Villa, 0 points from 1, at Villa Park on Monday in a clash of the best and the worst teams in the early season table.
Aston Villa have been the epitome of a 'crisis club' for the last couple of seasons, and 2026/2027 is shaping up to be no different. 4 defeats in the Villans' last 5 and a 4-game losing streak in the build up to this clash will be enough to worry Unai Emery.
The Gunners will look to exploit any mistakes and they have been in excellent form so far, winning each of their last 3 after back-to-back 3-0 victories over Man City and Coventry City. Mikel Arteta's men are controlling the flow of the game using positional play, inverted full-backs and high pressing from the front in unison.
The Villans have set up in a structured 4-2-3-1 / 4-4-2 hybrid under Emery, but the players clearly have no confidence and are playing on the back foot. They will try and force a few transitions, while Arsenal will want to keep Villa pinned back and win the ball high up the field. This should be a chess match in the middle of the park.
Arsenal won the corresponding fixture 4-1 at home in the Premier League 2025/2026 campaign, a fixture that highlighted the gap in quality between the two sides with a couple of goals for Arsenal.
Bukayo Saka is the leading scorer in the Premier League for the Gunners with 1 goal in 1 game, and that could very well be the difference in this fixture with him the most likely player to score anytime and Arsenal's main knife-edge threat in the final third. Ben White has 1 assist in 1 Premier League game for Arsenal, and he provides another clean outlet for Arteta to find when playing on the overlap and in the build-up.
Villa have averaged 1.0 goals per-game across the last 5 H2Hs with Arsenal and the visitors have averaged 1.5 per-game as a result. BTTS-No at 1.83 and Over 2.5 goals at 1.8 look like good bets for this fixture as Arsenal should have too much of the ball and the game should go their way, but Villa can nick a goal.
Arsenal should win this one and they are the standout favourites at 1.5, whilst Villa at 6.0 and the draw at 4.2 are simply too big to pass up.
