Arsenal vs Everton preview, team news, h2h, tips: Eze in, Saka out as Gunners chase 10th home win

Arsenal vs Everton is the game to watch on Saturday as the Premier League returns after a Champions League mini-break in midweek.

Eberechi Eze, born in London to Nigerian parents and long tracked as a talent the Super Eagles might have called their own, gets his clearest Emirates audition yet when Arsenal host Everton on Saturday in Premier League Gameweek 8.

The former Crystal Palace playmaker steps into the left-flank role left vacant by Bukayo Saka, who limped off with a quad injury in the 10th minute of Arsenal’s 2-2 Champions League draw at Bayern Munich on Tuesday.

Eze, 26, justified the faith shown in him at the Allianz Arena by scoring Arsenal’s opening goal, with Viktor Gyokeres later laying off for Declan Rice to make it 2-2.

Mikel Arteta, who said of Saka’s condition that “it does not look good at all,” will now field Eze from kick-off against an Everton side that has conceded more often than it has troubled opposition goalkeepers on the road this term.

Arsenal sit second in the Premier League with 18 points from seven games, three behind leaders Manchester City. Everton are eighth with 10 points, just three off the top four. The visitors’ season story is one of resolute draws rather than the kind of attacking intent that has troubled Arsenal at the Emirates in any of the last seven meetings between the two clubs.

Match radar: Arsenal vs Everton

Arsenal vs Everton: Can David Moyes’ men end the Emirates run?

Arsenal’s home record this season reads three Premier League games, three wins, seven goals scored, two conceded, zero draws.

Every fixture at the Emirates has been settled by exactly three goals total, which is worth noting for the betting markets discussed below.

Their only league defeat in the opening seven rounds was the 3-0 thrashing at Brighton and Hove Albion in September. The Gunners have since responded to that setback with back-to-back victories: 2-1 against Leeds United at home on October 10, then 1-0 at Nottingham Forest on October 18 where Noni Madueke slotted in with the 80th-minute winner from the bench.

The Champions League draw with Bayern Munich on Tuesday was a test of squad character, and the answer was positive: Rice’s leveller in the closing stages, set up by Gyokeres’ intelligent layoff, kept Arsenal’s continental record at seven points from three group-stage games.

Everton’s seven-game league run tells a different story: two wins, four draws, one defeat, with Saturday’s 2-0 home loss to Chelsea being their first of the season and their most revealing result yet.

David Moyes’ side are the joint-top draw merchants in the Premier League alongside Leeds United, Brentford and Manchester United, with four shared points from seven outings. But that caution has not translated to road wins, where three scoreless opening halves in three away games reveal how deep Everton tend to sit when they travel.

Thierno Barry, on three Premier League goals for the season, has supplied all the Toffees’ forward threat in patches. Barry has found the net just once in three away outings, and his isolation against two centre-backs, with Arsenal’s pressing shape cutting supply lines quickly, is the clearest tactical problem Moyes will not solve easily at the Emirates.

Head-to-head: Arsenal vs Everton

Arsenal are unbeaten in their last seven meetings with Everton across all competitions, five wins and two draws. The Toffees’ most recent victory coming at Goodison Park on February 4, 2023, when a James Tarkowski header settled a 1-0 win.

In the last five Premier League meetings, Arsenal have won three and drawn two, scoring six and conceding two, and Everton have not scored in either of their last two trips to the Emirates: a 0-1 defeat in December 2025 and a 0-2 loss in March 2026 when substitute Max Dowman became the youngest goalscorer in Premier League history in the 90th minute.

The all-time head-to-head across 227 matches gives Arsenal a commanding lead: 114 wins to Everton’s 65 with 48 draws. The visitors’ record at the Emirates is particularly bleak: one win, five draws and 25 defeats from their last 31 visits to this ground.

Arsenal vs Everton team news: Eze starts, Saka misses out

Saka’s quad injury is the headline omission from Arsenal’s plans, with Arteta’s post-Bayern assessment offering little immediate comfort for supporters hoping for a rapid return.

Eze shifts into the left-flank starting role, while Madueke takes the right channel, and the selection battle in the double pivot is expected to fall in Lewis-Skelly’s favour ahead of Guimaraes after the Brazilian was caught in open spaces against Bayern’s transitions.

For Everton, Moyes travels with a fully fit group, though Ainsley Maitland-Niles, who was at fault for Chelsea’s opening goal on Saturday, may be replaced at right-back by Jake O’Brien, a more dependable defensive option against a wide attack that will be active in both halves.

Arsenal vs Everton star player comparison: Odegaard vs Barry

Martin Odegaard, Arsenal’s Norwegian captain and the side’s primary creative outlet from the number eight role, goes into Saturday having scored twice in all three Premier League home matches this season, the same tally as Kai Havertz in the same fixtures.

Barry’s three-goal Premier League haul makes him Everton’s most productive attacker, though just one of those came as a visiting player, and his only away goal this season arrived in the second half, consistent with the Toffees’ total absence from the first-half scoresheet in all three road games.

The managers: Arsenal vs Everton:

Arteta has been in charge of Arsenal since December 2019, now in his seventh season at the club, and he delivered the Premier League title in 2024/25, ending a 21-year wait for the club’s first championship since the Invincibles of 2003/04.

His head-to-head record against Moyes since the Scotsman returned to Everton in January 2025 reads two wins and one draw from three meetings, all of which have ended with Arsenal not conceding more than once.

Moyes is in his second spell at Goodison after being appointed in January 2025 to rescue a slide towards the relegation zone. He served the club with distinction from 2002 to 2013 before leaving for Manchester United, and his contract here runs to the end of the current season.

Arsenal vs Everton tactical preview: How Eze can exploit Everton’s right flank

Arsenal’s shape without Saka is likely to remain a 4-2-3-1 rather than a three-man attack, with Lewis-Skelly and Rice providing the defensive screen behind Odegaard’s running off the ball.

The most direct threat comes down Everton’s right side, where O’Brien, newly restored to the starting position after Maitland-Niles’ Chelsea difficulty, faces an Eze who has not yet established the same winger-to-fullback duel rhythm with opponents that Saka has built over years at this level.

Everton will press the ball-near pivot in Rice and Armstrong’s channel, using Dewsbury-Hall’s forward runs off the second line to disconnect Arsenal’s buildup through the middle: a genuine tactical problem that forced the switch to Lewis-Skelly in the first place.

But the Toffees’ answer to falling behind will be limited: Barry is an excellent back-to-goal striker but lacks wide support capable of exposing depth when Arsenal hold a lead. Grealish’s tendency to drift inside from the left means Calafiori’s overlapping runs on that side of the pitch are rarely tracked by a tracking fullback.

The Naija Slip: Arsenal vs Everton

Four tips for Arsenal vs Everton, with the big-odds option riding on the Nigerian-heritage forward getting his moment at the Emirates.

Score prediction: Arsenal vs Everton

Arsenal’s home fortress holds and Eze delivers the moment Naija fans will remember, with the Nigerian-heritage winger finishing at the near post before Gyokeres adds the second in the second half.