Arsenal will discover their opponents for the opening day of the 2022/23 Premier League season later this week with the much-anticipated fixture announcement set for Thursday morning.
Although, if a two-year trend continues Mikel Arteta could be facing a dreaded first fixture in his attempts to ensure the Gunners get off to a flying start.
Over the past decade, Arsenal have kickstarted a new season at the Emirates Stadium more often than not. But for the past three campaigns in a row, they've been away from home against Newcastle United, Fulham and Brentford respectively - winning the first two and losing the other.
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Interestingly, and perhaps worryingly, in the past two seasons, the north London outfit's first fixture has been against the Championship play-off winner. This wasn't a problem for the 2020/21 campaign as they made light work of Fulham thanks to goals from Alexandre Lacazette, Gabriel Magalhaes and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.
However, history didn't repeat itself last season as the Gunners were beaten 2-0 by a Brentford side who were playing their first game in the top tier of English football in over 70 years and Arteta admitted afterward that his side got exactly what they deserved.
"It's a very disappointing night. We needed to start in a very different way. The performance in the two halves was different. In the first half, we had periods where we weren’t ourselves," the Spaniard said. "We got in trouble pretty easily in different ways with the long balls and the second balls. We were very disappointed with that.
"We reacted in the second half after going 1-0 down, when the crowd was right behind them. We created a lot of situations but not enough threat or shots on target to win a football match. When you concede a goal on a long throw, it then becomes a big task. Congratulations to Brentford on what they did, on what they’ve done to be where they are and for the fantastic crowd that they have right behind the team."
Now should the trend of Arsenal kicking off a new Premier League campaign against the team who won promotion via the Championship play-off final continue for the third year in a row, their opening day fixture for the 2022/23 season will be against Nottingham Forest.
This would be somewhat of a dreaded opening day fixture for the Gunners given they've lost on their two previous visits to the City Ground - although they were both in the third round of the FA Cup. In January 2018- under Arsene Wenger it finished 4-2 to the hosts and just last season Forest were 1-0 winners in a game that saw Nuno Tavares substituted in the first-half.
Forest overcame Huddersfield Town at Wembley Stadium last month to earn promotion to the Premier League for the first time since the 1998/1999 campaign and they could have Ainsley Maitland-Niles in their ranks - if this is the opening game - with their interest in the versatile midfielder confirmed.
