Arsenal Host Chelsea In Top Four Battle

Arsenal will be looking to close the gap on league leaders Chelsea with a win over Jose Mourinho`s side this afternoon. Today`s hosts currently sit in third position in the Premier League, 10 points off the table topping Blues.

Recording a win over their London rivals would lift Arsenal into second and would reduce the deficit to seven points. Their dreams of a late title challenge would all but dissipate should they fail to pick up all three points at home. Indeed should Manchester United beat Everton this morning and Arsenal fail to beat Chelsea, the Gunners would slide into fourth place.

Whilst a defeat would see Chelsea`s buffer reduced to seven points, a victory for the visitors would see them stretch their lead at the top of the Premier League to 13 points.

These two sides have only met once this season, this being in the reverse Premier League fixture at Stamford Bridge back in October. It was the hosts that ran out the winners on this occasion, sticking two goals past Arsenal without reply.

Eden Hazard opened the scoring just prior to the half an hour mark, the Belgian converting a penalty given away by Laurent Koscielny. That incident would see Koscielny recieve one of the seven yellow cards dished out during the 90 minutes. Chelsea would have to wait until deep into the second half to extend their lead and put the game beyond the Gunners` reach. Diego Costa hit the last goal of the match with just 10 minutes remaining.

Betvictor have a massive 17/1 on Chelsea beating Arsenal by two goals to nil once again with Hazard an 8/1 shout with ladbrokes to open the scoring for the second time against the Gunners. Whilst the price is 3/1 (betfair, paddy Power, william hill) on a penalty being awarded sometime during the 90 minutes, Bwin have 11/17 on over 4.5 yellow cards being shown during the encounter.

These big Chelsea related prices are due to the fact that it is actually Arsenal who are the favourites to take all three points from this afternoon`s tie. This is in spite of their inferior league position and previous loss against the Blues. A handful of bookmakers have odds of 6/4 on a win for Arsene Wenger`s top two hopefuls. Otherwise, Chelsea can be backed at the best price of 9/4 (william hill) to do the double over the North London club. A draw is available at 23/10 at all of Betbright, boylesports and Stan James.

The Emirates Stadium outfit and future FA Cup finalists have not dropped a point in any of their last eight top tier games. Indeed their unbeaten Premier League home run stretches all the way back to November. They have only conceded two goals in all of their last five most recent games on their home turf. An Arsenal clean sheet can be picked up at 2/1 (bet365, betfair, Spreadex) whilst a home win to nil is available at 10/3 at betfair.

Today`s visitors have not dropped a point in any of their last four Premier League clashes, scoring seven goals and picking up back-to-back clean sheets in their last two. In addition, the club have not lost in any of their last five on their travels and have hit their opponents for 12 during this period.

Having bagged three of these 12 goals, both Hazard and Costa are the club`s top scorers in this context. Costa managed to earn himself a bracw in the club`s 5-0 away win over Swansea and is available at 12/1 (ladbrokes, paddy Power) to add two or more goals to his tally this afternoon.

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26/04/2015     © Frixo 2024