Watch LIVE, Arsenal vs Nottingham Forest (Premier League).

After hoisting yet another trophy into the Wembley sky, Arsenal will host Nottingham Forest in their Premier League opener on Saturday.

The Gunners broke their Community Shield losing streak to Manchester City last weekend and are now looking for some payback against the club who put an end to their title hopes last season.
The new regulations against gamesmanship and time-wasting were painfully shown to Arsenal and Mikel Arteta in last weekend's Community Shield match against Manchester City, who resisted Gunners pressure before taking the lead with a magnificent Cole Palmer effort.

However, the North London giants quickly reaped the benefits of the new rules, as a deflected shot from Leandro Trossard in the 11th minute of second-half injury time set the stage for the Gunners' second consecutive penalty-shootout victory and the retention of their Emirates Cup crown at the expense of Monaco.

Arteta's men ended their streak of dismal defeats against the treble winners and potentially gave themselves a huge psychological boost ahead of another title charge, but the debate over whether the Community Shield counts as a piece of silverware continues to rage on.

An incredible 2022–23 season saw Arsenal surpass the expectations of most fans, analysts, and journalists; nevertheless, it only took a handful of injuries to crucial cogs for things to go pear-shaped, which the Emirates board has attempted to solve with a £200m+ summer shopping binge.

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The Gunners should be able to keep more clean sheets at the Emirates than they did in 2022-23, when they kept just four, including one against their first-day opponents in a 5-0 rout of Wolverhampton Wanderers on the final day.

Since then, Forest have tested themselves against several European opponents in preparation for the upcoming season. However, only two of Forest's seven pre-season matches ended with Cooper's men on the winning side of the scoreline, and in each of their final four tune-up games, Forest failed to win or score at all.

Forest walked away from Eintracht Frankfurt's headquarters with a decent 0-0 tie after suffering consecutive defeats to Leeds United, PSV Eindhoven, and Rennes, but scoring only three goals in seven warm-up encounters may be cause for concern.

Furthermore, no team performed worse on the road than Forest in the 2022-23 Premier League season, as Cooper's men picked up a paltry eight points on rival territory, and it has been 34 years since the Tricky Trees last managed to sink Arsenal on their own patch, winning 3-1 at Highbury in the 1988-89 First Division, despite the Gunners memorably going on to clinch the title that year.