🏏 Sat, 12 Sep 2026 20:00 BST
Sunderland AFC
vs
Arsenal FC
4-2-3-1 vs 4-2-3-1
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- Sunderland sit 14th on four points from three matches (1-1-1), with three goals scored and three conceded. They lost 2-1 at Ipswich on the opening weekend, beat Fulham 1-0 at home and battled to a 1-1 draw at Brentford. Arsenal arrive with a perfect record: three wins, nine points, six goals scored and just one conceded. They are level with leaders Manchester City on both points and goal difference (+5) but sit second, so a win here is about reclaiming top spot.
- Granit Xhaka, Sunderland's 33-year-old captain, returns to face his former club. The Switzerland skipper won league titles with Arsenal and Bayer Leverkusen and still threatens with his ferocious left-footed shooting and long-range distribution. He partners 21-year-old Noah Sadiki, an Anderlecht academy product via Union Saint-Gilloise, in the double pivot, and goes up against Declan Rice, the 188cm England international whose ball-winning and range of coverage anchor Arsenal's midfield.
- Dan Ballard is a second Arsenal old boy in the home XI. The 26-year-old centre-back came through the Gunners' academy, spent loan spells at Millwall and Blackpool, and has since earned more than 30 Northern Ireland caps. He scored the winner in the Championship play-off final, and now partners Kevin Danso, the 190cm Austria international signed permanently from Lens, in a physically imposing centre-back pairing.
- Brian Brobbey leads the Sunderland line after arriving for around 20 million euros on a five-year deal, having scored 56 goals in 163 appearances for Ajax. The Dutch striker's power and pace will be tested by an Arsenal back line that has conceded only once in three matches, marshalled by the 190cm left-footed Gabriel Magalhaes and Ezri Konsa, the former Aston Villa defender whose recovery speed and duel-winning are his calling cards.
- Bukayo Saka occupies the right of Arsenal's attacking three, cutting inside on his left foot to produce both goals and assists at the top of the squad's charts. He is picked up by Reinildo Mandava, the 32-year-old left-back who made 99 appearances for Atletico Madrid under Diego Simeone and became the first Mozambican to play in the Premier League. Ben White's inverted runs from right-back add another layer Sunderland must track.
- Arsenal's 4-2-3-1 features a notable positional twist. Myles Lewis-Skelly, a 19-year-old left-back by trade from the Hale End academy, starts alongside Rice in the double pivot, while Riccardo Calafiori, the 188cm Italy international with an excellent left foot and a taste for overlapping, takes the left-back slot. It is a shape designed to create overloads down that flank while keeping Lewis-Skelly's passing in central areas.
- Sunderland have their own out-of-position selection: Thomas Meunier, a natural right-back standing 190cm, starts on the right of the attacking three. The 35-year-old has 76 Belgium caps and scored in the 2018 World Cup third-place play-off, and his crossing accuracy from Paris Saint-Germain and Borussia Dortmund days will be aimed at Calafiori. On the opposite flank, Ecuador winger Nilson Angulo, a winter signing of roughly 17.5 million pounds who managed seven goals and eight assists in 30 games for Anderlecht, attacks Nordi Mukiele.
- Arsenal's bench may be the biggest gap between the sides. Viktor Gyokeres, who scored 97 goals in 102 matches for Sporting CP, waits alongside Eberechi Eze, the creative force behind Crystal Palace's 2025 FA Cup triumph, Bruno Guimaraes, the Brazilian who ran Newcastle's midfield, and Martin Zubimendi, the Real Sociedad-schooled holding midfielder. Arsenal can therefore switch from Kai Havertz as a false nine to an out-and-out striker at will.
- The goalkeeping duel is worth watching too. Robin Roefs, 23 and 1.93m tall, made his name at NEC Nijmegen in the Eredivisie and is a rare left-footed keeper whose distribution and reflex saves earned him an immediate starting role. David Raya, 30, is the modern sweeper-keeper who came through Blackburn and Brentford and is renowned for penalty saves and decisive one-on-one interventions. Both build from the back, so pressing triggers could decide who blinks first.