The Gunners take on Stoke City at Britannia Stadium on Sunday in their Barclays Premier League fixture.
Manager: Mark Hughes
Club colours: Red and white striped shirts, white shorts, red and white socks
Nickname: The Potters
Three facts about Stoke City:
- 11 of the 14 goals Stoke have scored against Arsenal in Premier League history have been netted in the first half.
- Stoke scored with three of their four shots on target against Arsenal in this fixture last season and all of them came in the first half.
- Olivier Giroud has the best minutes per goal ratio of any Premier League player this season to score more than five times, netting every 117 minutes on average.
The silky winger was signed from Inter Milan in one of the most surprising deals of the summer. A Champions League winner with Bayern Munich, the highly rated trickster is the man to watch.
Arsène Wenger has revealed the latest team news ahead of Sunday's Premier League match at Stoke City:
on the team news...From Liverpool we have no injuries, so that’s good news.
on whether Elneny will play... Elneny is available for selection, I haven’t decided yet [whether I will play him]. I have to see how everyone has recovered. Elneny is a possibility to be in the squad for Sunday.
on Alexis... Alexis I would say has a 60:40 chance to be available and be back in the squad. He has two decisive days - Friday and Saturday. He is fit, he has worked very hard and the decision we have to take is whether to take a gamble or not on his injury.
on Rosicky... Tomas needs first to have a game somewhere. We hope for maybe an under-21 game or at least a bit more training with the first team.
Arsène Wenger says his side have identified “little details we have to work on” ahead of their trip to Stoke City.
This weekend’s match at the Britannia Stadium follows four days after Wednesday’s entertaining 3-3 draw at Liverpool - a game in which the Gunners looked set for victory before Joe Allen’s last-minute equaliser.
What is most important is that we looked like a real team who is up for the fight
Arsenal have conceded seven goals in their last two matches on the road but the boss is backing his team to respond on Sunday.
“There are periods in the season… overall 90 per cent of the time we are very solid defensively, but on these two occasions [Southampton and Liverpool] we certainly looked vulnerable defensively,” the manager said.
“There does not look to be a special reason. At Southampton we looked a bit jaded after the Man City game, at Liverpool maybe we lacked a little bit of calmness and when we played against Benteke we should have moved out of the box because it is difficult to win a header on a long ball against him. Little details we have to work on and improve.
“My regret [from the Liverpool game] comes from the fact that at 3-2 we had two or three good opportunities to kill them off that we didn’t take.”
Wenger was happy with the overall performance against Liverpool.
“Overall for me personally it is a positive team performance. What is most important is that we looked like a real team who is up for the fight,” he said.
“Above the result, what is more important is that we have shown that we are a real team and we are ready in every single game to fight for a positive result.”
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