Arsenal out to set new club defensive record against Newcastle United

The Gunners have been rewriting pages of their history books throughout 2024 so far, having won their first five league games of a calendar year for the first time ever.

The fourth match in that sequence - the 6-0 annihilation of West Ham United - also saw Arsenal achieve their biggest-ever Premier League away win, and their joint-largest success away from home in their entire league history.

Thanks to their record-breaking exploits, Arsenal sit third in the table - five points behind leaders Liverpool with a match in hand - although a 1-0 defeat to Porto in the first leg of their Champions League last-16 tie did dampen spirits in midweek.

Mikel Arteta's men have also been left frustrated in their last two clashes with Newcastle, going down 1-0 at St James' Park last November after a goalless home draw against Eddie Howe's men in January 2023.

However, that 0-0 stalemate in North London saw Arsenal register their seventh successive Premier League clean sheet against Newcastle on familiar soil, and not since the 2014-15 season have they shipped a goal in a top-flight home game to the Magpies.

Should Arteta's men prevent Newcastle from finding the back of the net on Saturday, it will mark the first time in Arsenal's history that they have kept eight straight home clean sheets against a single opponent in league matches.

Ayoze Perez was the last man to score for Newcastle at the Emirates in a Premier League game, although his strike in December 2014 was a mere consolation, as Olivier Giroud and Santi Cazorla both netted twice for Arsenal in a 4-1 win.

Since then, the visitors have attempted 63 shots without success away to Arsenal in the Premier League, and they were also beaten 2-0 at the Emirates in the third round of the FA Cup in the 2020-21 season.

Arsenal have already posted 30 clean sheets against Newcastle in Premier League fixtures - their most against a single opponent - and they are unbeaten in 12 successive home contests against the Magpies, who last won on their turf in 2010.

Andy Carroll scored the only goal of the game on that occasion, 13 years before Anthony Gordon's winner - the awarding of which was labelled a "disgrace" by Arteta - gave Newcastle an identical triumph at St James' Park.

The Spaniard was charged by the FA over comments he made about the officiating performance before being cleared by an independent commission, and he can sense the yearning for revenge within his squad ahead of Saturday's rematch.

"I could sense in the dressing room straight away that we wanted to play the next day. After that defeat, that feeling that you get, I'm sure that when they come back in an hour or two I'm going to be seeing that desire again," Arteta said at Friday's pre-game press conference.

Three months on from that painful defeat in the North East, Arteta claimed that VAR decisions had "significantly" improved following the publication of statistics showing that 96% of calls in the Premier League have been correct since the technology was implemented.

The Arsenal boss also had good news to share on the conditions of Gabriel Jesus and Thomas Partey, but Jurrien Timber, Takehiro Tomiyasu and Oleksandr Zinchenko are all set to be missing from the squad for Saturday's game.