Arsenal vs Crystal Palace LIVE: Premier League result and reaction as Gunners net five at Emirates Stadium

Mikel Arteta has acknowledged Arsenal can ill-afford any more slip-ups in the Premier League title race.

Manchester City’s impressive win at Newcastle last weekend sent an ominous warning to the chasing pack, but Pep Guardiola’s holders are only second in the table behind Liverpool.

Arsenal battled to a 1-1 draw at Anfield before Christmas and yet trail Liverpool by five points after a poor festive period.

Mikel Arteta’s side have scored one goal from 61 shots across their last three fixtures. They are in danger of losing three matches in a row at home without scoring for the first time since 1908.

Crystal Palace’s tally of 21 points is their lowest after 20 matches of a Premier League campaign since they amassed 19 in 2018/19 during Roy Hodgson’s first spell as manager.

But, Palace can win consecutive league games for the first time since April, when they won their first three after reappointing Hodgson as manager.

Arsenal have taken just four points from their last 15 available. They had only dropped nine points from their opening 15 league games this season.

The Gunners could suffer four consecutive defeats in all competitions for the first time since February to March 2018 in Arsene Wenger’s final season as manager.

Roy Hodgson says his team are underdogs against the Gunners this afternoon but knows that the Eagles have a good chance of taking something from the match especially given Arsenal’s recent record.

He said: “I’ve never taken a team to Arsenal thinking: ‘this is an easy one for us.’ It’s always been up against it really, the underdog, which we still are in this match as well.

“But I thought there were a lot of aspects to our play on Wednesday night which were very satisfying. I thought we carried out our gameplan pretty well and on another occasion, I think we’d have even got a result from that game. I do think we take a little bit of positivity from the Wednesday evening game into that game tomorrow with us.”

Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko return from injury for Arsenal in a total of are four changes to the starting line-up with David Raya coming back into goal and Leandro Trossard preferred on the wing.

Crystal Palace makes two changes from the FA Cup defeat at Everton. Dean Henderson comes into goal while Jean-Philippe Mateta also starts.

Jesurun Rak-Sakyi remains sidelined with a hamstring issue.

Arsenal XI: Raya: White, Saliba, Gabriel, Zinchenko; Rice, Havertz, Odegaard, Saka, Trossard, Jesus

Crystal Palace XI: Henderson; Clyne, Andersen, Guehi, Mitchell; Richards, Lerma, Hughes; Eze, Schlupp, Mateta

Mikel Arteta says that Arsenal still have a few players on the injury list but they are closer to returning after a successful winter break trip to Dubai.

“We still have a few unfortunately on that list that we haven’t managed to get back yet, but hopefully they are much closer and some of them are in a better place than we expected.” He replied when asked for an injury update.

“Individually I’m not going to tell you exactly how everybody is, but we are still missing a few.

“[The training camp] was great, it was a phenomenal camp in every sense. We worked really hard on things that we wanted to do, and we recharged our batteries.

“The context and the change in environment in beautiful weather helped, and the togetherness and the moments that we shared together were great. We feel fully recharged.

“I think it gave us an opportunity to look at things with a bit of perspective and analyse what we’ve been doing, and I will take a lot of positives from the first six months of the competition.

“Even though results haven’t gone our way in the last few games, when you look at what we have produced in terms of the Premier League and any other team, we are up there.”

Arsenal have won three consecutive Premier League encounters against Palace, following a run of one victory in the previous eight. Can they make it four in a row this afternoon?

Mikel Arteta will be hoping so.

Crystal Palace have won just five of the 47 league meetings, including only two away: 2-1 at Highbury in 1994 and 3-2 at Emirates Stadium in 2019.

Palace are unbeaten in their last three Premier League visits to Arsenal under Roy Hodgson. They were under the caretaker management of Paddy McCarthy when they lost 4-1 at the Emirates last season.