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Rotation on the cards for Arsenal, but that doesn’t mean weakness

Suburban Gooners Logo Suburban Gooners Logo So, we have ourselves a League Cup tonight and following Mikel Arteta’s press conference yesterday, we’ve got a bit of speculation over who he’s going to start that is the key topic for today, for sure.

Arteta gave an update following on from Sunday’s win over Palace and with a number of players coming off with knocks, there was a little bit of trepidation in my mind in terms of who might be fit not just for tonight, but for the weekend’s Saturday visit to Burnley. Thankfully Rice, Calafiori and Saka are all fine, but given some of their knocks and illnesses over the last week, if I was able to speak directly to Mikel Arteta today I would implore him to not start any of those guys and to go for a bit more rotation than he is used to.

Martinelli and Saliba are out however, with Arteta not even being drawn on whether they will play against Burnley at the weekend and if that is the case, I think we need to double down on our rotation. For example, we know that Arteta usually plays one of Saliba or Gabriel in this kind of position, but I really hope he has big Gabi out of the firing line tonight too. He had a knock going into the Palace game, he clattered against the post in the Palace game, I just think it would be prudent to sit him down tonight and let him rest up. Besides, we’ve got Mosquera who has been fab, plus Hincapie Arteta was bigging up at the weekend and saying that we fans will love him, aswell as telling the journo’s yesterday that he’s a warrior and the intensity and physicality he will bring to the team being such an asset. That’s the kind of ‘bigging up’ that makes me think he should start and when he was asked about the level of rotation, he did say:

We’re going to try to manage the minutes and the loads as best we can because, as you say, we have a lot of games coming up with a very short recovery time, which is a bit unusual, but we’re going to remain very competitive.

That feels to me like a fair bit of rotation, but I think it happens at the back rather than in attack, so I’m thinking we’ll see a line up like this:

Kepa

White – Mosquera – Hincapie – MLS

Norgaard

Nwaneri – Merino

Saka – Gyokeres – Trossard

It’s not the line up I would pick, it’s a line up that I think Arteta will go for. I would like to see Nwaneri and Eze together as creative eights, then Merino up top for Big Vik, but I think Arteta will see the need for the duel-winner in midfield and the battling attributes of Gyokeres as important in a game like this in which Brighton might rotate, but I still think they’ll have their big hitters like Dunk in there for the physicality. Then I’ve gone for Trossard because Martinelli is out, whilst Saka was bulled just after the hour mark on Sunday and if he’s over his illness, he should be fine.

It’s a team that is stacked with experience and quality and a few ex-Brighton players in there too to add a little narrative to proceedings. White, Big Vik and Trossard have all had minutes for the Seagulls and even though it was some time ago, I bet they still feel like they want to impress that little bit more against an old club. It’s only natural. But equally Brighton have a player in form in the shape of ex-Arsenal man Danny Welbeck returning to the Emirates. He’s similar to our ex-Brighton players; he played a fair few games for us, but that was a while ago and he’s also had a move to Watford before he went to Brighton so it’s not as if he hasn’t long ago moved on his career. He was still such a good pro for us, just couldn’t stay fit, hence moving on with plenty left in his tank. It’s funny though because I think of him as ‘our’ player, but he’s made more appearances, scored more goals, played more minutes for Brighton than he did for us, so we’re a club with which he’ll no doubt have an affinity with, but there’s always going to be a stronger connection to Man United and Brighton for him when he hangs up his boots I think.

And for that reason I hope he fires complete blanks if he plays tonight!

Some players who won’t be playing are Milner, Mitoma, Gruda and a guy called Harry Howell who I think is less of a blow for them, but he has apparently been playing in the League Cup. There’s also Veltman who is out and that’s a good thing, because he’s a nasty little fecker and was the one involved in the sh*thousery last season that got Rice sent off for something that, unsurprisingly, we’ve never seen since. The German spoke to the press yesterday too and the main comments he made was “we will be ready” but my hope is that much like how Palace are not used to the volume and frequency of games, the same is said for Brighton and they rotate too. If they do, then I’d fancy my chances. If Hurzler plays his strongest available team then this might be a tough night for us because those players might be in to a cadence of games a little better than our starting line up. We saw in the Olympiajos game that White looked a little rusty, however what I would say is that if Arteta plays the team I suggest he might do above, most of these players have been getting regular minutes and so the only question marks over match fitness will probably be White, Hincapie, Norgaard and perhaps Nwaneri. Other than that we’ve seen Merino, Mosquera, MLS and Trossard all involved quite a lot and Trossard has started most of the games recently. So I’d still expect us to be quite match fit and ready for this one.

And it’s one I think we should all want to win. I get it, we hopefully have bigger fish to fry in other competitions, but a competition like this affords for rotation of players much like the Champions League home games or away matches like we should be doing against Slavia Prague. It keeps players ticking over on match fitness and then if we’re winning, an opportunity to give the likes of Dowman some minutes in the last third of the game or so. I also think that when the next time this competition comes around after this match, we’ll have a squad far more stocked. For example, if Madueke is fit but Saka has played most minutes, you could see him come in. Kai could play in it as he returns to fitness. You could have Martinelli in there, or perhaps Eze and Merino as Odegaard and Rice play the game after that. Those are all permutations that could happen, but you have to win in this competition to see whether they come true. So that is the aim tonight. Let’s hope we do it.

I’ll be back tomorrow with some post-match thoughts. So have a good one.

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Gooner born in 1982 from Harlow, Essex, now living in Uxbridge. I say what I see - frequently wrong, but hey, it's just an opinion piece, right? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.