Premier League predictions, picking every game: Is it all too difficult for Arsenal as they face Liverpool?

No one at Arsenal would ever imagined that breaking their 21-year Premier League title drought would have been straightforward. Can it, though, really be this difficult? As Liverpool await, already the year that felt like it was going to be the breakthrough has the feel of an almighty slog.

Almost everything that could have gone wrong has gone wrong. Arsenal's injury fortune was never quite as pronounced as skeptics suggested -- after all a title challenge fell apart with one injury to William Saliba -- but what is true for the most part is that Mikel Arteta has been able to avoid repeated damage to one spot. Gabriel Jesus might go down but Kai Havertz could enter the fray or Jorginho would plug a Thomas Partey-shaped hole. For most of the last two seasons Arsenal have had just enough.

This season, the damage has been altogether more targeted. Arteta has six full backs to call on in his first team squad. Every one of them has spent time on the sidelines. Takehiro Tomiyasu and Kieran Tierney will be missing on Sunday. Jurrien Timber remains a doubt. Given the damage that Riccardo Calafiori seemed to do on Tuesday, it would be a shock if the tests he is due to undergo on Friday signal his availability for 48-hours later. In such circumstances it is almost remarkable that there are multiple options at left back.

It doesn't end there. Suspension and injuries mean the midfield Arteta might have envisaged as his first choice -- Declan Rice, Mikel Merino and Martin Odegaard -- has shared the pitch in only one training session. Odegaard had missed just four Games in the 2022-23 and 2023-24 campaigns. The ankle injury he picked up on international duty with Norway has already sidelined him for five. For a time Arsenal held firm in the absence of their most creative midfielder, Kai Havertz excelling in a 4-2-4 formation, but take iron man Bukayo Saka out of the equation as well and it is no wonder the attack slowed in the last two Games.

None of Saka, Timber and Calafiori took part in open training on Friday. Arteta increasingly relishes the opportunity offered in a press conference to sew doubt in his counterpart's mind ahead of kick off, but he is surely telling the truth when he admits that even he doesn't know his starting XI yet. It is eminently plausible that Arsenal will be without their best defender, midfielder and forward in a match where they could drop seven points off the Premier League summit.

All that and we haven't even got to the red cards. No Declan Rice at Tottenham, half a Game a man down at the Etihad and now William Saliba's absence to go alongside the injury headaches in the backline. Set aside complaints over the frequency with which delayed restarts are sanctioned. The only thing that seems to be clear about this Arsenal side right now is that luck does not seem to be on their side.

Arteta does not seem to mind. If anything he seems to be relishing the examination of his club's mettle that will come from a visit by the Premier League leaders at the most inopportune of moments.

"I love watching individuals and teams react to [adversity]," said Arteta. "Is it a [down] look? I hate it. I haven't seen it in the staff, I haven't seen it upstairs, I haven't seen anyone talk about it. Get on with it. Get on with it. 

"Show your teeth. Show how much you want it. This means opportunities for other people, opportunities for us as a team to rebel against certain situations. We need the crowd more, on Sunday even more. Let's keep going."

It's easy to say that, another thing to keep that attitude when barely a game goes by without a setback. How does Arteta keep from sinking when, for instance, Calafiori's knee and ankle seem to buckle against Shakhtar Donetsk? "It gives me zero for the next moment, the next day, the next preparation," he said. "It just takes things out of me. If it takes things out of me, it takes things out of the staff because they are close to me. If it takes things out of the staff, it's then the players. 

"Then your belief? Throw it away."

That belief ought not to vanish entirely. In spite of their many absences, Arsenal remain a serious force, all the more so when they don't contrive to handicap themselves with 10 percent fewer outfielders. Per Markstats, their expected goals for and against are the best in the league when games are 11 vs. 11. The spirit with which Leandro Trossard-less Arsenal clung to their lead in the second half of the Etihad rather obscured how, at their full compliment, they had matched Manchester City in the first. Already this season has brought statement wins at Aston Villa and Tottenham, places where usually only a serious title contender departs with three points.

Their performances so far in 2024-25 might be more unknowable given the injuries and, in particular, the red cards but at their full compliment they have shown nothing to disabuse anyone of the notion that they are the same team who had the best underlying xG in the Premier League last season. After an extremely challenging run of Games, they remain just about in touch.

"We are really lucky as well to have the squad that we have," Arteta said, "to have the players that we have, to have the attitude that we have. When it comes down to reacting against a difficult situation, we don't feel sorry for ourselves - face it.

"We are a team that we know how good we are as well and how difficult we can be for the opponents. And having that ruthless mentality is something that I love."

It might feel like Arsenal don't have the fortune of champions but Arteta would have you believe they have the mentality. Overcoming Liverpool would go some way to proving that.

Scroll down for our predicted score in this and every other one of today's Premier League Games:

Friday, October 25
Leicester City 1, Nottingham Forest 1

Saturday, October 26
Aston Villa 1, Bournemouth 2
Brentford 2, Ipswich 0
Brighton 2, Wolverhampton Wanderers 2
Manchester City 4, Southampton 0
Everton 0, Fulham 0

Sunday, October 27
Chelsea 1, Newcastle 1
Crystal Palace 2, Tottenham 1
West Ham 0, Manchester United 2
Arsenal 1, Liverpool 3