EPL Odds: United and Arsenal Evenly Matched

Manchester United (+162) vs Arsenal (+162), Draw (+230)

Arsenal (7-3-1, 24 points) will travel to Old Trafford this Saturday (November 19) to play Manchester United (5-3-3, 18 points) for the first time this season.

Manchester United are off to a terrible start this season. In fact, their record so far under Jose Mourinho is far worse than it was under David Moyes and Louis van Gaal. They’re currently sitting in sixth-place in the Premier League and struggling to make it out of the Group Stage of the Europa League.

But things looked hopeful after their convincing 3-1 win over Swansea last week. Paul Pogba opened the scoring with a signature blast from outside the box. Finally, the young Frenchman is starting to find his place within the team and showing glimmers of brilliance. Not £93.2m-level brilliance, but brilliance nonetheless.

And Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who had failed to score in his last five appearances, broke the drought in spectacular fashion with two goals.

That would be great news if it weren’t for one thing: Ibrahimovic won’t be playing this week against Arsenal. The Swedish striker received his fifth yellow of the season during United’s 3-1 win over Swansea.

This has United fans fuming, and rightly so. Zlatan is United’s top goalscorer, with six to his name this season. And just when Ibra seemed to have recovered from his recent scoring drought, he went and got himself suspended with a needless foul in a game where they were already up 3-1.

Without Ibrahimovic, United do not have many goal-scoring options. Jesse Lingard and Anthony Martial have been uninspiring this season, and Wayne Rooney has been dreadful. The only other striker that’s been in form is the inexperienced Marcus Rashford.

Arsenal, on the other hand, have been playing consistently good football this season. Not great, but good enough. They sit in fourth-place, three points clear of rivals Tottenham in fifth. Mesut Ozil has been in spectacular form recently, and Alexis Sanchez and Theo Walcott have been reliable goalscorers.

Manager Arsene Wenger has expressed his disappointment with the Gunner’s defense of late. So it’ll be interesting to see if Manchester United can exploit that weakness. But without Ibrahimovic, it’s going to be tough. The Gunners look like good value on the road. 

Pick: Arsenal (+162)

Photo credit: “Mesut Ozil of Arsenal during the game against Watford.” by joshjdss (Flickr) [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/].