An away trip to face Sunderland at the Stadium of Light is not the scariest of prospects for an in form. Arsenal team. The Wearsiders form is not exactly awe inspiring either, with defeats to fellow strugglers Fulham and Crystal Palce and a draw at Southampton so far in the league. They do have a home win, but that was against MK Dons in the Capital One cup.
All in all, you would think that Arsene Wenger does not have too much cause for concern, unless he reads the article in today’s Mirror about what happened at the same stage last season. The Gunners went into the international break in fine form, having lost just one game, somewhat unluckily against high flying Chelsea.
We had put six past Southampton, won convincingly away at Liverpool and West Ham and won our first Champions League game well. However, it all went wrong when we restarted. Norwich were in a similar state as Sunderland are now, but we traveled there and lost. That was the beginning of a terrible run of form, and the lacklustre performance that day was thought to be due in part to the international games tiring the players and interrupting the momentum.
Before the next international break in October, Arsenal have Premier League games against Sunderland, Stoke, Swansea and West Brom. We also travel to Marseille and host Napoli in the Champions League as well as having a tricky first Capital One cup game at West Brom. We also have a fair few injury problems at the minute, but we also have the imminent return of Vermaelen, Arteta and the Ox as well as the huge boost to everyone that Mesut Ozil has brought to the club.
If we get a good result at Sunderland, all thoughts of an international hangover will disappear, but a defeat will have the media heaping pressure in Wenger and the Arsenal players again.
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