Gunners
Phase 2 of Season about to Land….
Below are the fixtures Arsenal have from this Saturday through to the next international break in October. Four games in the Premier League, two in the Champions League and the League Cup tie at Port Vale as well.
• Forest (H)
• Bilbao (A)
• City (H)
• Port Vale (A)
• Newcastle (A)
• Olympiacos (H)
• West Ham (H)
Arsenal’s 2025/26 fixtures: pic.twitter.com/2H8bM6Xr6v
— Gunners (@Gunnersc0m) June 18, 2025
Expectations From Phase 2
For me, the Forest game has to be a win. Despite injuries, players flying back from South American international duty and being given the early kick off time, we absolutely must beat a team that, since a win on the opening day, have drawn with Palace and lost heavily to West Ham. West Ham!!
They have also sacked their manager during the break and replaced him with Big Ange, we cannot let them get any kind of new manager bounce and must remind everyone how bad his Spurs team were for the majority of his two years in charge.
Another 5-0 home win would be great but a 95th minute winner from a corner will allow us to start rebuilding momentum after the reverse at Anfield.
The City game I think we should also be thinking of as a must win considering the start to the season they have had and the fact they have a very tough looking match against Napoli on Thursday night and we get our European fixture out of the way on Tuesday. We were discussing City a few days ago and the general opinion was that they aren’t going to get it together to properly challenge for the title this year and, if things take a turn for the worse, it wouldn’t be a major surprise to see Pep go before the end of the season.
The West ham game looks a pretty certain win, outside of the last 10 minutes at Forest they have looked atrocious all season.
Assuming the three home games bring three wins I would probably settle for a point at Newcastle. It's a tough place to play and we haven't do well up there at all in the last few years.
I’m hoping we might see Saka, Saliba and some of the other injured players return around the Man City game (Saliba straight back in and Saka from the bench would be my choice) and so I think if we can take 10 points from 12, considering 3 out of 4 games are home then we will in pretty good shape in a months’ time.
I imagine playing on the Tuesday in Bilbao ahead of a Sunday premier league game means we will see a full-strength team, fitness issues permitting as there looks to be plenty of time to recover and the travel to northern Spain shouldn’t be too onerous. The Olympiacos game should be one we target as a banker 3 points at home in this years competition and could allow for resting players later in the group stage if we are sitting pretty.
Who do Liverpool play?
Liverpool's fixtures in this phase are:
• Burnley (A)
• Atletico Madrid (H)
• Everton (H)
• Southampton (H)
• Crystal Palace (A)
• Galatasaray (A)
• Chelsea (H)
Aside from the Burnley match there does seem to be the possibility of them dropping some points over this phase. Everton have a full week to prepare for them whereas Liverpool have Atletico on the Wednesday, are scoring goals for once and have Jack Grealish with a point to prove plus it’s the Merseyside derby. Palace at home can give anyone a game and, despite no longer have Eze, will not roll over and lastly they go to Chelsea following a midweek trip to Turkey in the Champions League.
I can see them dropping points in at least one, maybe two of those games and maybe we will start to see some bad luck finally hitting Arne Slots team for the first time since he took control. Be that underserved winners for opponents or the magical fitness touch they seem to have had for the last 18 months.
Prediction Time
If we can get 10 points from our games, we won’t be any further behind then we are now and could even close the gap by a couple of points if Liverpool stumble to a couple of draws. Come on you Gunners!
