Next Saturday, 23rd August 2014, Roberto Martinez’s Everton will entertain one of the title contenders, Arsenal, at Goodison Park for the second round of the English Premier League.

After a somewhat bumpy pre-season and after lifting the Community Shield trophy against Manchester City last season, Arsenal continued with their inconsistent performances on their Premier League debut against their neighbours of Crystal Palace last weekend. The Gunners secured the win late in the match, thanks to a goal by the Welsh midfielder Aaron Ramsey, but their overall performance was fairly unimpressive. Arsene Wenger's team failed to produce quality football throughout almost the entire match and their mushy gameflow wasn’t enough to test the abilities of their opponent’s Argentinean goalie, Julian Speroni.

Crystal Palace, who is currently orphan of a head coach after Tony Pulis' unexpected departure last week, caught everyone by surprise when the former Fulham centre back Brede Hangeland headed in the first goal of the match on the 35th minute of the first-half. The Gunners managed to react and leveled the score just before the half-time break, thanks to an effort from Koscielny, and granted their narrow win just minutes before time, thanks to a goal from Aaron Ramsey.

For his team's trip to Goodison Park next Saturday, Arsene Wenger will still not be able to count on the contribution of Ospina and of Theo Walcott, the latter still recovering from the knee injury he suffered sometime ago. On the other hand, he might be able to rely on the comeback of the German internationals Per Mertesacker and Mesut Ozil, who lost almost the entire pre-season due to their participation in the World Cup this Summer.

As for Everton, their next Saturday match against Arsenal will present a good opportunity for them to grab their first win of the season after their last weekend’s draw at King Power Stadium against Leicester. Roberto Martinez’s boys controlled a great deal of the match but were caught red handed on the 85th minute when the Australian forward Chris Wood leveled the score for Leicester. At the end of the match, the Spanish manager expressed some mixed feelings concerning the outcome of his team’s first season clash, as he claimed that they were a bit soft during the first goal and that they became too relaxed after scoring their second one, something that might have costed Everton a draw on their Premier League opener.

For the match against the Gunners, Roberto Martinez will not be able to count on Ross Barkley, who will be sidelined for a long time because of a recent injury, and on Bryan Oviedo, who is also still recovering from a recent knock.

When Arsenal visited Goodison Park back in April, they were smashed 3-0 by Everton and although we are still on the early stages of the new season, the Gunners need to improve a lot to prevent something similar from happening again.

Everton

Stats: W-0 L-3 D-2

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Arsenal

Stats: W-3 L-2 D-0

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Possible Line-ups

Everton (4-3-3) – Howard - Stones - Distin - Jagielka - Baines - Barry - Besic - Naismith - Pienaar - McGeady - Lukaku

Arsenal (4-2-3-1) – Szczesny - Debuchy - Mertesacker - Koscielny - Monreal - Arteta - Ramsey - Cazorla - Oxlade Chamberlain - Sánchez - Giroud

Prediction

Everton 1 Arsenal 1