Opportunity to Seize (Arsenal V Newcastle Preview)

Monday night 20:00 GMT and Arsenal are back in the fray! once again against another contender for the top four finish on the table. The gunners go into this one in a more confident mood than they were in at the beginning of the season when all they had available for the same fixture were rookies. Having managed to fight and turn around their season in dramatic fashion against all odds especially after being written off by almost every pundit before and after Christmas. For the first time since the season began, they managed to string together four back to back wins in their last premier league encounters and are aiming to make this their fifth. Despite the failings at the start of the season, the gunners are now setting their eyes on finishing third above their north London rivals tottenham who have never finished above them in the Barclay premier league, something that the current crop of players are keen to maintain.

Battle Field:
contention is mostly expected to be about midfield duels as Newcastle are predicted to play a very physical game in the middle of the park in order to disrupt any creativity by the explicitly passing Arsenal side on home turf. With this approach, Newcastle hope to gain advantage by lofting the ball into the box to a target man who will most likely be their on form striker Demba Ba and with Arsenal's season long defensive struggles, the away side hope to inflict pain on the hosts like they managed to do against the reigning champions Manchester United when they visited the Sports Direct Arena earlier on in the season. However, the gunners too seem to have an inspired plan with their resurgent form and returning of players like Arteta, Benyoun Santos and Ramsey from injuries and also the fact that this will be the only game they have to play till 10days later when they play Everton. This means that they can give the game their whole and fight hard to gain the three much needed points.

Predicted Starting XIs
Arsenal: Sczesny, Sagna, Vermalean, Koscienly, Gibbs. Song, Arteta. Rosicky. Chamberlain, VanPersie, Walcott.
                           Formation: 4-2-3-1
NewCastle: Krul, Simpson, williamson, coloccini, santon. Tylor, Tiote, Guthrie, Cabaye, Guttierez. Ba
                          Formation: 4-5-1