{"id":10985,"date":"2025-03-31T21:45:22","date_gmt":"2025-03-31T20:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=10985"},"modified":"2025-04-02T01:22:25","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T00:22:25","slug":"no-foolin-gunners-aim-to-quell-upstart-cottagers-in-launch-of-post-interlull-push","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=10985","title":{"rendered":"No-Foolin\u2019 Gunners Aim to Quell Upstart Cottagers in Launch of Post-Interlull Push"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color:#fff;display:inline-block;font-family:Roboto,sans-serif;color:#a7a7a7;font-size:11px;width:100%;max-width:594px;\"><div style=\"padding:0;margin:0;text-align:left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1418529653\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;\" rel=\"noopener\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div><div style=\"overflow:hidden;position:relative;height:0;padding:66.66667% 0 0 0;width:100%;\"><iframe src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/1418529653?et=-tdYCgDySn1amBRGR3Ky_g&amp;tld=com&amp;sig=oI1ESfhac0JrCqL7-A8J0VUcykGcFIZg01s1f8Av4dg=&amp;caption=true&amp;ver=1\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"594\" height=\"396\" style=\"display:inline-block;position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;margin:0;\"><\/iframe><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Hooray, the Interlull has ended, and Arsenal hope to celebrate that fact on Tuesday evening with three points against their guests from the west of London. &nbsp; On the Arsenal website this week Jonathon Rogers put together an enjoyable piece with the highlights of five famous wins against Fulham, in each of which bar one (in 2002, 2005, 2010 and 2019) Arsenal scored four times.&nbsp;&nbsp;Wouldn\u2019t it be nice to see something similar happen this time, I hear you thinking.&nbsp; The fifth match in question, however, in 2022, was the most recent home fixture in which Arsenal took all the points from these opponents, and it was a markedly tight affair in which Gabriel provided a late winner.&nbsp; That game\u2019s 2-1 result is a more likely predictive model for Tuesday\u2019s contest than any of the others considering that the Gunners still have several important attackers out injured, and they drew twice and lost once in their three most recent league encounters with Fulham.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Opposition<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fulham have been referred to as \u201cArsenal B\u201d from time to time this season due to their ex-Gunners contingent of Bernd Leno, Alex Iwobi and Emile Smith Rowe, as well as Arsenal loanee Reiss Nelson.&nbsp;&nbsp;The Cottagers are in the middle of an excellent season, and currently stand 8th in the Premier League, having won 12 and lost only 8 of their 29 matches.&nbsp;&nbsp;Their away record is equally impressive as they have won 6 and lost only 4 of their 14 away games.&nbsp;&nbsp;Fulham come into this match on three days rest having exited the FA Cup at the quarter-final stage on Saturday when they lost at home to Crystal Palace by 0-3.&nbsp;&nbsp;Fulham were on top in that game for the first 30 minutes but failed to take advantage of their early dominance, and I am a bit leery that a top half club like Fulham are unlikely to play two such poor matches consecutively.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Gunners will be looking to make amends for the two points they dropped to Fulham in this season\u2019s reverse fixture in early December when Saliba canceled out an early Jimenez go-ahead goal for the Cottagers, and Arsenal\u2019s late winner was subsequently chalked off by the execrable VAR authorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Arsenal&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The peach of Mikel Arteta\u2019s pre-match team news is that Bukayo Saka is fit to start, in an amazingly quick recovery.&nbsp;&nbsp;Saka, who surely must now be considered the Gunners\u2019 star man as Ethan Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly have grown into the role of the new star boys, has been out for over three months after undergoing surgery on his torn hamstring.&nbsp;&nbsp;Even if he doesn\u2019t start against Fulham, and I think it\u2019s probably a tad early to risk his complete recovery by playing him from the start, Bukayo\u2019s availability is wonderful news for the remainder of Arsenal\u2019s season.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our often injured left back Calafiori is out for several weeks, but the rather sturdier Timber has recovered from illness, and could be due to start at left back, giving MLS a rest as Ben White contends for a return to his place as Arsenal\u2019s starting right back.&nbsp;&nbsp;So, I expect Arteta will name a starting XI with many of these names, although they are likely to be positioned slightly, or perhaps significantly differently than I suggest here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">Raya<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">White&nbsp;&nbsp;Saliba&nbsp;&nbsp;Gabriel&nbsp;&nbsp;Timber<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">\u00d8degaard&nbsp;&nbsp;Partey&nbsp;&nbsp;Rice<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">Nwaneri&nbsp;&nbsp;Merino&nbsp;&nbsp;Martinelli<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As I hinted above, 2-1 to the Arsenal sounds just about right to me, and particularly if we can find a source for the couple of goals we may need to get over the line in our first post-Interlull outing.&nbsp; Wherever you are watching the game, \u2018holics, enjoy the game and do your best to cheer us to the magic three points.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Embed from Getty Images Hooray, the Interlull has ended, and Arsenal hope to celebrate that fact on Tuesday evening with three points against their guests from the west of London. &nbsp; On the Arsenal website this week Jonathon Rogers put together an enjoyable piece with the highlights of five famous wins against Fulham, in each [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10985"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10985"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10994,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10985\/revisions\/10994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}