Warning lights flashing for Arsenal after last-gasp own-goal win

Good evening and welcome to live coverage of the Premier League match between Arsenal and Wolverhampton Wanderers at Emirates Stadium. Even in a low-key round of fixtures, a match pitting the leaders at home against a side so holed beneath the waterline in bottom place is a curious choice for a prime-time TV slot but I suppose there was a very light twitch on the thread from Wolves when they built up towards the equaliser against Manchester United on Monday, their first goal under the management of Rob Edwards, that they are not entirely without all hope.

Yet, then again, the capitulation from 1-1 to 1-4 was so depressingly familiar that the chances of a first win in N5 since the Covid season, which would be their second since 1979, does seem vanishingly small.

Comeuppance tends to strike those who survive by the seat of their pants for a couple of years when they continue to flip their better players and lose all consistency and identity in the make-up of their squad. When everyone is for sale, every player transient, how can you forge a bond with them? If Wolves owners are not prepared to do it, they should sell the club to someone who can give the supporters a team with which they can identify and hence connect. Right, rant over.

Wolves come into the match with two draws from 15 matches – Derby had six at this point of their 2007-08 11-point season – having scored only eight, two of them own goals, and having conceded 33. They have some very useful players who may flourish in better teams but the sense is that they have a side crying out for experience and leadership. Arsenal, by contrast, have lost only two matches and although they were defeated by Aston Villa last time out in the league, they showed their resilience with a highly irregular back four and their clean sheet in the 3-0 victory in Bruges this week.

The ongoing absence of Christhian Mosquera and Gabriel, and Riccardo Calafiori’s one-match ban, will mean another makeshift defence tonight though Jurrien Timber and William Saliba were given some chance of involvement by Mikel Arteta yesterday while Declan Rice and Leandro Trossard should be back. In an ‘It never rains…’ scenario, the scorer of Wolves goal at Molineux on Monday night, Jean-Ricner Bellegarde, has joined Rodrigo Gomes and Marshall Munetsi on the casualty list.