Syndicated reporting provided by Stats Perform and reviewed by the SoccerNews editorial team.
Manchester City might lead the way in the Premier League after winning their opening six games of the season, but defending champions Arsenal are just three points behind them.
Having only dropped points away to Brighton, the Gunners will feel quietly confident about their position, and that is to say nothing of the prospect of Man City receiving a penalty after being found guilty of breaching the Premier League’s rules.
On Sunday, Mikel Arteta takes his team to the City Ground to face Nottingham Forest, who have struggled in the early stages of Oliver Glasner’s reign and only have five points on the board.
But which way will the game go? After consulting Opta insights, we pick out the key players and storylines to watch in our data-powered preview.
The Opta supercomputer is firmly behind Arsenal for this game, with their win probability standing at 58.3%.
Across the model’s 10,000 pre-match simulations, Forest won 20.4%, while the remaining 21.3% finished level.
And in our 2026-27 season predictions, Arsenal’s 44.7% chance of winning the title makes them slight favourites, ahead of Man City’s 42.5%.
The last two Premier League meetings between Forest and Arsenal at the City Ground have ended goalless, with 40 combined shots being attempted without success.
Battling away. https://t.co/WaJOpFafCd
— Nottingham Forest (@NFFC) October 15, 2026
Forest have only won one of their last 11 Premier League matches against Arsenal overall (D2 L8).
That victory came by a 1-0 scoreline in May 2023, with Taiwo Awoniyi’s goal sealing a result that not only secured Forest’s Premier League status for another season, but also mathematically crowned Man City as champions.
Forest have failed to score in each of their last four meetings with Arsenal, with Awoniyi netting another goal against them in a 2-1 home defeat in January 2024.
Forest must find shooting boots as Glasner’s slide continues
When Glasner masterminded a 2-1 victory over Fulham on December 7 last year, his Crystal Palace side sat fourth in the Premier League table.
Of course, the Austrian has had more highs since then, leading the Eagles to Conference League glory in May to rubber-stamp his standing as their greatest-ever manager, before leaving for Forest.
But very few of those positive moments have been in the Premier League. Since that victory over Fulham, Glasner has only overseen five wins in 29 matches in the English top flight (D9 L15).
Since the start of that 29-game sequence, on matchday 16 of 2025-26, Glasner’s 17% win ratio is the second-worst among all managers to oversee at least 20+ Premier League games, with only former Wolves boss Rob Edwards (13%) faring worse.
Last Sunday’s 3-1 defeat at his former home of Selhurst Park will have particularly stung Glasner, especially with Forest firing off 24 shots and racking up 3.36 expected goals (xG). Their eight big chances in that game were the most by any team to lose a Premier League game since Blackburn Rovers against Newcastle United in February 2012.
8 – Blackburn vs Newcastle in February 2012 (9) are the only team on record (since 2010-11) to record more big chances in a Premier League defeat than Nottingham Forest against Crystal Palace today. Wasteful. https://t.co/ukZuIEtHXC
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) October 11, 2026
And things do not get much easier for them this weekend, as they go up against the Premier League’s reigning champions and joint-best defence so far this season, in Arsenal.
Forest’s underlying metrics so far this campaign have been broadly positive. Their per-game averages in the Premier League for shots (17.7), expected goals (1.72 xG), touches in the opposition box (27.3) and big chances (3.5) are their best in any of the last five seasons.
However, they have scored with just 4.7% of their shots and have the worst xG differential in the division this season, netting five times from 10.3 xG (-5.3).
Dan Ndoye is the only Forest player to net twice in the Premier League this campaign, with Liam Delap, Igor Jesus and Morgan Gibbs-White all netting once apiece.
Delap was guilty of a particularly glaring miss against Palace, and he has a conversion rate of just 7.1% from 14 shots this campaign, only hitting the target with two of those efforts. If Forest are to turn their form around, it will likely need to start with their misfiring forwards.
Arsenal finding new ways to win as set-piece prowess wanes
Arsenal have responded strongly since their 3-0 defeat at Brighton going into the international break, fighting back from 1-0 down to beat Leeds United 2-1 last time out in the Premier League, with Riccardo Calafiori and Bruno Guimaraes on target.
The Gunners have now gone 1-0 down three times in their last four Premier League matches, as many times as they did in their previous 25 combined.
They have won two of those three games, though, and no team has won more points from losing positions this season than the Gunners’ six.
Arsenal have now won 14 of their last 17 Premier League games (L3), with nine of those wins coming via a one-goal margin.
In the last two seasons, they have won 17 matches by a single-goal margin, the most of any side in Europe’s big five leagues, so their knack for grinding out wins remains in place.
However, somewhat curiously, Arteta’s side have not really been able to rely on their set-piece prowess in the early stages of this season.
The Gunners, who scored 25 non-penalty set-piece goals in the Premier League last term, including a single-season record 19 from corners, are yet to find the net from a set-piece (excluding penalties) after six Premier League matches in 2026-27.
It is their longest run without one since a seven-match streak between January and March 2025, and the first time they have not netted one in their first six games of a campaign since 2011-12.
Winning together, captured on 35mm film Photos in collaboration with Rodrigo Onzi https://t.co/5tQxOG6VfR
— Arsenal (@Arsenal) October 15, 2026
But they did the job from open play in the second half of Tuesday’s Champions League clash with Lille, as Jurrien Timber, Eberechi Eze and Bukayo Saka scored in a 3-0 win.
Saka now has 19 goals in major European competitions for Arsenal, the second-most in their history behind Thierry Henry (42), while his nine assists in the Champions League are their third-most ever, behind Henry (16) and Cesc Fabregas (14).
Nottingham Forest – Morgan Gibbs-White
Gibbs-White may feel like he has been let down by his team-mates at times this term, as only Brighton’s Pascal Gross (18) has created more chances in the Premier League than his 17.
The England international also leads all players for open-play chances created (15), big chances created (seven) and expected assists (1.87 xA).
In the last two seasons, Guimaraes has scored in three of his five substitute appearances in the Premier League, netting three goals overall, including the winner against Leeds.
— Premier League (@premierleague) October 15, 2026
Both of his two Arsenal goals have been as a substitute, with Leandro Trossard being the only Gunners player to score his first three Premier League goals for the club off the bench.
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