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Venue: White Hart Lane, The Other North London
TV: NBCSN
Time: Sunday, March 16, 12 noon ET, 11 am CT, 9 am PDB's house
Previous Matchups This Season: Won 1-0 at home Sept. 1, Won 2-0 at home Jan. 4 (FA Cup 4th Round)
Overview: Despite TSF's current cordial exchange with our counterparts at Cartilage Free Captain, Arsenal and Spurs enjoy one of the most storied rivalries in the Premier League (read: they don't like each other very much), and this match could very well accelerate the arrival of this year's St. Totteringham's Day. Thanks to Fabian Delph's beautiful goal today to lift Villa to a 1-0 home win over Chelsea, and thanks to upcoming fixtures against Chelsea and Manchester City, Arsenal will finish above Chelsea if they win all of their remaining games regardless of what Chelsea does, and needs just a little bit of additional slipping up from Manchester City and Liverpool to win the league. So, you know, easy.
Most recently: Arsenal tied Bayern Munich midweek 1-1, going out of the Champions League competition on a 3-1 aggregate, and lost its last league match Mar. 1 to Stoke 1-0 (sorry if you'd already forgotten), while Benfica bested Spurs 3-1 this past Thursday (of course Thursday) in Europa League action to send Spurs fans into further freakout -- its last league match was a 4-0 drubbing to Chelsea on Mar. 8 full of Spurs back four comedy stylings.
Lineup Guesses: Arsenal's running out of bodies to put out there -- a quick TSF consultation led us to ask Rosicky vs. Podolski in the Starting XI, but given Poldi's great form against Bayern, let's go with this --
Szcz
Sagna-Koscielny-BFG-Gibbs/Monreal (whoever's most healthy)
Flamini-Arteta
Ox-Cazorla-Poldi
Giroud
Prediction: Dos a Cero's becoming the norm for Arsenal, and it's a fitting scoreline considering what happened last time around. Let's say Ox does something incredible midway through the first half to put Arsenal up, and then Giroud benefits from a Rosicky energy sub and makes something pretty happen with about 10 minutes to go.