Arsenal vs. Everton: Declan Rice, Bruno Guimaraes 'concerns' addressed before Premier League clash

Ahead of Arsenal 's Premier League showdown with Everton at the Emirates on Saturday afternoon, Sports Mole site coordinator Ben Knapton addresses a key concern around Declan Rice and Bruno Guimaraes and also responds to accusations that the holders are "boring" to watch. Everton: Why Gunners shouldn't care about boring label I genuinely do get it [the boring label].

The Man City teams that used to win the league would go gung-ho on the attacking front, the 2019-20 Liverpool team was absolutely ruthless in attack. This is an Arsenal team that won the league largely based on its defence rather than its attack.

But if being boring wins you the Premier League, I'll take that every single day of the week. I remember periods where Arsenal would sometimes blow opponents away, during recent times and during the Arsene Wenger era.

It was entertaining, and we would score so many goals and go for the jugular against those teams. Similar to the 22-23 and 23-24 seasons where we scored so many goals and set club goalscoring records in the Premier League.

But what did we win?Just one Community Shield. Those two seasons really seemed to scar Arteta.

At the time we still had Gabriel, Saliba and Ben White in defence, but we were scoring so many goals while also being prone to the odd lapse in concentration. Over the last two seasons, Arteta has really gone from chaos to control.

In the 24-25 season, there was a bit of an anomaly when that shift from chaos to control happened and Arsenal fell way off the pace set by that Liverpool team under Arne Slot. But now players are a year older and a year wiser.

There were still so many players in their early to mid-twenties back in those 23-24 seasons. Now they're in their mid to late twenties and early thirties, really in their prime, much more experienced and used to Arteta's system.

When they get into that horseshoe shape, it is not exciting at all. Against Nottingham Forest it felt like the same old thing, but like against Lille, if you can completely wear teams down by passing the ball about, there has to be that one breakthrough moment.