Chelsea will clash heads with Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium looking to consolidate their position in the Premier League standings. The Pensioners are currently occupying the fourth spot and need to earn some favourable results over the coming weeks to see off the challenge of the Gunners and Manchester United in the top 4 race this season.
Maurizio Sarri might opt for a 4-3-3 formation and could choose to name an unchanged side for this league encounter in North London.
4-3-3 Chelsea Predicted Lineup To Face Arsenal
Defence
Kepa Arrizabalaga will start in goal for the Pensioners this weekend after keeping two clean sheets in his last three league outings. The Spanish shot-stopper has been a solid presence at the back for Chelsea, so Sarri would hope that he would put in another brilliant display versus the Gunners this weekend.
The defensive duo of David Luiz and Antonio Rudiger should continue their stellar partnership at the centre of the Chelsea defence as they attempt to keep the likes of Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang quiet on Saturday evening.
Cesar Azpilicueta will keep his place at right-back, but he might have a lot of work to do defensively as he would be up against Alex Iwobi and Sead Kolasinac who would both look to outnumber him down the wide areas. Marcos Alonso needs to improve a lot at the left-back position after putting in a string of underwhelming performances in recent weeks. The Spaniard’s poor form has been one of the main reasons why Chelsea have struggled to find consistency over the past couple of months in the English top-flight.
Midfield
The Chelsea boss might opt to stick with his favoured midfield trio of Mateo Kovacic, Jorginho and N’Golo Kante in an effort to establish Chelsea’s dominance in midfield. Ruben Loftus-Cheek will miss out from this encounter due to injury so Danny Drinkwater and Ross Barkley might be available on Sarri’s bench this weekend.
Attack
Eden Hazard might be asked to lead the Chelsea attack once again while Willian and Pedro provide support from the wide areas. The poor form of Olivier Giroud and Alvaro Morata has seen Sarri opt to play Hazard down the middle despite the Belgian struggling to score goals as a centre-forward up top.
However, Hazard still offers a lot of creativity up top and has a knack for creating chances out of nothing inside the opposition penalty area so we can expect him to be the away team’s biggest weapon going forward.
