Awesome Arsenal Looking To Down Dortmund

These are heady days for Arsenal. Just two months on from the doom and gloom of the opening day Premier League home defeat to Aston Villa, everything’s going so fantastically well that the biggest worry when Borussia Dortmund come visiting tomorrow night is over-confidence.

Coral go 11/8 Arsenal taking down last season’s Champions League finalists and Gunners fans, still swooning about the mesmerising football played by their boxes of tricks against Norwich last Saturday. will be eager to fill their boots.

They were indeed quite awesome at times at the weekend, especially when sending the Canaries’ defence dizzy with a blur of flicks and one-twos for Jack Wilshire’s opener, a strong early contender for ‘Goal of the Season.’

But that was Norwich and this is Dortmund. Arsenal are odds against for a reason. The Germans were, don’t forget, the side who hammered Real Madrid in the Champions League semi-final last spring before making a real game of it with the brilliant Bayern Munich in the Wembley final.

And though it will be a surprise if Dortmund go as far this time (they are 16/1 to win outright with Coral and are by no means certainties even to make it through the Group stage), they are still a very strong outfit, probably the best side Arsenal will have faced in any competition so far this season.

Lying second in the Bundesliga, just a point behind Bayern, Jurgen’s Klopp’s team remain very dangerous opponents and will remain so for at least as long as world-class striker, Robert Lewandowski wears their colours.

By all accounts, they have yet to really sparkle this campaign, despite their good start on paper, and their players recognise that they will have to step it up if they are to get something out of the first of these mid-group double-headers against the Premiership leaders.

But it would be foolish to underestimate them and we can be sure that Arsene Wenger will be impressing upon his players to treat such top quality opponents with the respect they deserve. It all seems good at the moment, but Group F will look very different if Arsenal don’t get the better of Dortmund in this next fortnight.

Having said all that, Arsenal’s sky-high confidence has to stand them in good stead. As each week goes by, there’s another player in the queue to score; first it was Olivier Giroud (11/2 to net first or last tomorrow, 6/4 at any time), then Aaron Ramsey (10/1 and 7/2) and then Mesut Ozil (13/2 and 15/8) and now Wilshire (10/1 and 7/2) is getting in on the act.

The Gunners will obviously need to be wary of Lewandowski (6/1 and 7/4) and Dortmund are by no means a one-man show, but Arsenal can take a big step towards qualification here, perhaps winning 2-0 (14/1) to give Wenger double cause for celebration on his 64th birthday.