Arsenal vs Everton: Forget everything you thought you knew

Arsenal’s home form has been pristine all year, but it’s in matches like these where things go awry. So forget everything we thought we knew, this is different.

It’s been a bumpy ride in Unai Emery’s first season with Arsenal, but none of that is surprising. It’s not easy to take over a club that’s been with the same manager and culture for 22 years, and the growing pains mostly came from the order that Wenger established, and Emery’s desire to rock the boat a bit.

Through it all, there has always been one thing that we knew – at home, this team was fantastic. They are in a race for the title if the season was based on home points alone but, unfortunately, that is not the case.

Still, the club has built up a nice head of momentum going into this road trip to Everton. They haven’t lost in the Premier League since early February and have looked like a new team ever since. Even in their most recent away match, they traveled to Wembley and pulled of a 1-1 draw with Spurs that for all intents and purposes, should have been a win.

Regardless, everything changes when we hit the pitch of an away match. While we’re at home, there aren’t many doubts – we’re a crazy good team. The points show that. We dominate matches with a three-back set and marauding wingbacks and everyone is happy.

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For away matches, as we’ve all seen, Emery’s prerogative seems to be to overload the midfield and squeeze out opposing attacks at the source. Not the worst idea when you’ve got a midfield like the Gunners do, but for the Everton match, we won’t.

Still, what this really comes down to is playing on the road and nothing more. We did just fine against Newcastle with a battered midfield, but that means nothing going into the Everton match. Even the momentum means very little. I think back to our journey to West Ham. We’d just battered Fulham 5-1 and Blackpool 3-0 and the Hammers held us 1-0. It was like getting hit by a train.

The momentum this time feels more real. But I may just feel that way because it’s more recent. The simple truth is that whatever we thought we knew going into this match is going to be tested here.

I can’t say it enough though, at least it’s Goodison. There are far worse grounds to travel to.