The Arsenal v Leicester City, Saturday 28 September 3pm KO, Emirates Stadium

0-3 Vardy hatter

Raya may not be fit for this one but Neto wil be able to play, elsewhere White and Timber are still doubts

The good news is Trossard served his ban for the Bolton game so if we want we can start him again and he'll obvs be fully rested

If Saka gets another assist he'll break a PL record, currently held by him and Henry, as having an assist in the most number of consecutive games at the start of a season

If Raya, White and Timber don't play then maybe it's this:

Neto
Nicholls Saliba Gabriel Califiori
Partey Rice
Saka Sterling Trossard
Havertz

I've put Nicholls at RB instead of Partey, I thought he did very well in the week and it's his natural position

I also think Arteta will continue to play Partey ahead of Jorg for now at DM

Also Nwaneri must be in for a shout instead of Sterling, but if he did play Nicholls maybe that woud be two very 'new' players to be fielding

I hope we win, tbh.

There has been a question doing the rounds as to whether Nwaneri should start and I’m inclined to say yes


For a game like this you absolutely don’t need two defensive midfielders, so the option is there to both play Nwaneri and whoever is going to fill in for Odegaard at Number ten.






There’s no sense in my mind to play both Rice and Partey when we have a potentially tricky match against PSG to navigate. Playing Saka against Bolton was silly in the extreme, but that’s done with and I’d consider resting him also.

Martinelli needs to be playing games like this in order to recapture confidence as i simply don’t see Trossard as being quick enough to be worth playing on the left long term


Neto, Califiori, Saliba, Gabriel, Kiwior, Rice, Nwaneri, Trossard, Martinelli, Havertz, Sterling

I'm not against that although again Kiwior's not a natural RB so I do wonder about playing Nicholls instead

I guess it does work to play Nwaneri and Sterling if as you say we don't play two DMs

Martinelli played a lot of minutes in the week so I think he'll maybe revert to Trossard as he's got the fresher legs and I don't think Arteta thinks he's as bad a starting player as some people do (and nor do I)

I don’t have an issue with starting Trossard, my opinion is simply that Martinelli is a superior player who needs the game time to recover his form, and I consider that more important than Trossard being happy. But then again it’s academic anyway, as I would play them both on Saturday.

I see you're leaving out Saka, I hadn't spotted that, yes it makes sense though not sure Arteat will leave him out, he's more likely to start him and then take him off

I don't think Martinelli is superior they're just different players

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mac76

I see you're leaving out Saka, I hadn't spotted that, yes it makes sense though not sure Arteat will leave him out, he's more likely to start him and then take him off

I don't think Martinelli is superior they're just different players

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Fair enough, my opinion is that he is. That’s not having a go at Trossard either…I think he’s a very good player


I just think Martinelli is an exceptional player both in terms of pace and technique….i think he’s another player who has been mismanaged by Arteta and it’s affected his confidence. I think the potential is there for him to be better than Saka, as for me as good as Saka is…he’s a little one dimensional

mismanaged how? I think he got a good run of games last season but then lost form so given we were in a title race Trossard took his place because he was scoring goals - if a player does well he deserves to be given a chance and he was contributing more than Martinelli

And this season we've seen Martinelli more than i was expecting, Arteta's given him a fair number of minutes

I think there are signs he's getting back to good form but in front of goal his decision making and execution are still poor atm

I realise Saka seems one-dimensional in attack but he also does a job defensively, he can do more when called upon

It’s not the lack of minutes, but when a player is clearly lacking in confidence you need a coach who is a people person who can work on it with them. Arteta isn’t the type of person to put an arm round the shoulder, in that event there should be someone who is.
Gabriel Jesus has also clearly been mismanaged, whilst never prolific the extent of his deterioration despite a long term injury is shocking.
In my view it’s about Arteta’s indifference to attacking football and attacking footballers. Even with Saka there’s clear mismanagement and in recent seasons you saw him drop off in form in a big way.

Want to see some goals from our forwards here.