English Premier League Betting – Arsenal vs. Stoke City
By Zack Garrison in News
Updated: January 17, 2018 at 9:40 am ESTPublished:
Arsenal (-225) vs. Stoke City (+700) (+333)
After beating Hull City in the FA Cup (2-0), Arsenal will host Stoke City in the 21st fixture of the English Premier League (Sunday, January 11, at 7:30 a.m. Eastern).
Arsenal lead the series between these two sides with 52 wins in 100 games (all competitions). Stoke have beaten the Gunners 25 times, and 23 ended in a draw. Arsenal have absolutely owned Stoke at home lately, winning 12 in a row at Emirates Stadium. Though it’s not just the Potters whom Arsenal have dominated at home; the Gunners have lost just one of their last 28 games at Emirates Stadium (18-8-1).
The Gunners are heavy favorites to add to their win total on Sunday, listed at -225 in the moneyline, while Stoke is at +700 and the draw +333.
Arsenal are currently sixth in the league with 33 points (9-6-5) and a +9 goal difference. While most teams would be pleased with that status midway through the season, the Gunners aren’t one of them. The team, which advanced to the Round of 16 in the Champions League with relative ease, expected more coming into the year.
Stoke City is 11th in the table with 26 points (7-5-8) and a -2 differential. But they haven’t lost in their last four matches (all competitions) and have a 2-1-0 mark in their last three in the Premier League.
Stoke also manged a win over Arsenal earlier this season at Britannia Stadium (3-2 on December 6, 2014). Manager Mark Hughes was amazed with his players’ performances.
“The first half was excellent to be perfectly honest, and was probably the best 45 minutes that we have played during my time here at the Club. I thought we executed our game plan to absolute perfection. We talked about getting the ball into the box with better quality, and we managed to do that to quite a devastating effect at times,” said Hughes after that game.
Hughes’ boys will have to play another perfect game in order to defeat Arsenal next Sunday. And almost no one has been able to do that at Emirates Stadium this season.
(Photo credit: Ronnie Macdonald (flickr) [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode]. Photo has been cropped.)
Sports Writer
Zack is a tour guide whose favorite sports are football, baseball, and golf. He enjoys giving obnoxious commentary during games and hopes to some day write a book about sports. His favorite underdog victory was the Diamondbacks beating the Yankees in game 7 of the World Series.
