⚽️ Premier League updates from the 8pm BST kick-off
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Mikel Arteta speaks to Sky Sports. “We will have time to make changes throughout the game … Villa are a super well-coached team … we know how tough it is to come and win here … we are very conscious of that … but we are very ambitious … we want to be dominant … to suffocate the opponent … to be better than them.”
Tonight’s game has implications at both ends of the Premier League table (and yes it is far too early to be taking these sorts of things totally seriously, but then try telling that to supporters of Hull City). Arsenal can go top if they win by two clear goals, while Aston Villa would drop to the bottom should that happen. But if Villa win, they are guaranteed to rise to 13th place, and could theoretically go as high as eighth, though they’d have to beat Arsenal by seven goals to do that, and they’ve never run up seven against them in 122 years of trying. (Arsenal have scored seven in this fixture, mind, and one man got them all: Ted Drake, in a 7-1 rout in 1935. Drake took nine shots that day; of the other two, one hit the bar and the other, the striker insisted, crossed the line but wasn’t given. But we’re going well off piste here.)