It’s Friday, it’s press conference day and with Mikel Arteta having bedded back in some of our strikers in midweek’s Champions League win, I’m interested to see in what kind of mood he might be today. Hopefully it is a jovial one, because the frustration and annoyance of last Saturday’s defeat has been countered with an impressive Champions League victory and with key players also rested up, we can look ahead to Wolves with a degree of confidence that – at home – we should be able to overcome the current worst team in the league.

Wolves have picked up just two points this season, have scored eight goals in their 15 matches they’ve played, they’ve let in 33 and one look at one Wolves fans forum gives you and idea on what they think will happen – this prediction forum here has their fans saying it’ll be an Arsenal win with an aggregate score of 69 – 15 and an average rating of 5-0 Arsenal from 15 responses – not one thinking Wolves will win. They’re at the point where they are just happy when they score and that’s a bit sad really when the Gallow’s Humour kicks in.

You can see why – there aren’t many stats at all that are in favour of Wolves this season, albeit they aren’t comfortably the worst, so I don’t think we’re going to get the battering that many think we might dish out tomorrow. They’re in the bottom three for xG created and xG allowed, although they aren’t bottom of that one with West Ham and Burnley both delivering shockers in that regard. Weirdly too, they aren’t bottom of the shots on target faced either; Burnley take that crown with West Ham also ahead of them. Where they are rock bottom is their percentage of shots they save; which isn’t a stat a ‘keeper ever wants to see but it appears as though they don’t have a good time of it when teams get shots on target.

Their ‘keeper is a launcher of the ball from goal kicks and from a defensive point of view they top the league with the number of tackles they make in their own defensive third with 156 – no other Premier League team has to make as much. I read that stat and think that they might play in a low block, but weirdly, in terms of the average distance from their goal that Wolves make a defensive action (tackle, blocked shot, etc), it’s actually quite hjigh at 15 yards from their own goal. Arsenal are the highest with 18.6 because obviously opposition teams don’t get as close to our goal as much, so you’d think a low block team would have lower average distances (again, West Ham and Burnley are in the bottom two there), but Wolves are actually sixth in the league for average distance on defensive action. So, what does that mean? If I go amateur data nerd on you for a second (as I like to do), that tells me that Wolves are a team who play a higher line than you’d expect and that there might be some opportunities to get in behind tomorrow evening – I’d certainly hope so.

You’d also hope that defensively we’d be able to keep them quiet, because they have the lowest number of shots they’ve taken this season of any team, the lowest number of shots on target per 90 and the fifth highest distance that they’re taking their shots from at 17.4 yards. So this is a team that is struggling to penetrate opposition back lines up until this point and who don’t create many chances or shots at all. This will be a Wolves team that goes long as often as possible – they have the highest number of attempted long balls in the league – and this is a team who when the ball does go long it goes into the channels and they look to cross the ball in (they have the highest number of crosses into the penalty area of any team this season.

Arsenal will be aware of this, Arteta will be aware of this, they need to be ready for this and they need to be in the mindset of scoring early because if we do (and I’ll do more of a match preview tomorrow), then I think this game could run up a few goals.

But football is weird and even though there won’t be too many brave men betting on Wolves winning at The Emirates tomorrow night, I still feel like we need to be wary of any threat or potential banana-skin. You only need to look back a couple of weeks to see how Villa nearly came a-cropper; Wolves looked good, scored a good goal that was ruled out, forced Martinez into some great saves (including tipping one onto the bar) and Villa had to rely on a wonder strike from the edge of the box to seal the win. We know what good form Villa are in so for Wolves to give them the type of game they did, should serve as ample warning for Arteta and his coaching staff.

But if you want to win league titles then you have to win your home games like tomorrow, so Arsenal have a job to do and that’s what Arteta will be telling those players in training today.

More on how Arsenal will line up tomorrow, as well as any interesting titbits from the press conference today but for now, I hope you have a great Friday and I’ll be back tomorrow with more pre-match thoughts.