Former Chelsea striker Chris Sutton has made his prediction for Arsenal’s Premier League trip to Wolverhampton Wanderers on Saturday (April 20).
The Gunners are coming off a 1-0 defeat at Bayern Munich in the UEFA Champions League quarterfinal second leg. That knocked them out of the competition with a 3-2 aggregate defeat, having drawn 2-2 at the Emirates in the first leg a week earlier.
In the league, Mikel Arteta’s side are coming off a 2-0 home loss to Aston Villa last weekend, squandering a chance to take over at the top. The defeat leaves them two points off the summit with six games to go.
However, with Wolves going winless in four games, Sutton predicts a narrow 1-0 win for the Gunners, writing in his BBC prediction column:
“This is a massive game for Arsenal, but it definitely helps them that Wolves are on a pretty terrible run, without a win in four games. The talk this week about the Gunners has been whether the wheels are coming off, but I don’t think that’s the case.”
“They maybe lacked a bit of composure in their defeat by Aston Villa. But Villa have got some very good players, as do Bayern Munich, who beat them in Germany on Wednesday.”
He continued:
“I’d put Arsenal’s Champions League defeat down to their failure to win the first leg at Emirates Stadium, and it would have been a different story if Bukayo Saka hadn’t dived when he was through on goal late on in that game.”
“I’m still probably basing this prediction more on Wolves’ form than on Arsenal’s but I do think the Gunners will find a way to win at Molineux. I hope they do too, because I don’t want Manchester City to have it all their own way in the run-in.”
The Gunners won the reverse fixture 2-1 at the Emirates in December.