Arsenal will take on West Bromwich Albion at the Hawthorns this evening in the EFL Cup second round.
The Gunners arrive in dreaded form having lost both of their opening two Premier League games, and will likely welcome the chance to take a break from that this evening.
West Brom shouldn’t be taken lightly however, especially given they are very-much in form so far this season, winning three and drawing once from their four Championship outings, scoring 11 goals in the process.
We could really do with putting out a strong starting eleven and taking tonight’s match seriously, especially with the team in need of a confidence boost also.
With Arsenal expected to field a strong side, and with the need of a win, I struggle to believe that this game will be taken for granted, and envisage that the team will be motivated to put things right after a rocky couple of weeks.
We also have the benefit of a number of players returning to availability as noted in our Confirmed Team News earlier on today, which can only help our cause.
With all this in mind, I’m predicting a nice 3-1 win for Arsenal, and despite wanting to see a clean sheet, I feel like West Brom have enough to get one on the board.
What are your early predictions for the upcoming cup clash?
Patrick
I expect Arteta to field his strongest possible line up as he knows he’s on thin ice.
I prefer it when a strong team goes out and gets replaced by the second string after we go 0-4 up 😉
We can not be enemies of our manager who especially was our former captain and who means well for this club,he didn’t offer himself this contract.I saw RWANDA president whose country sponsors our shirt sleeve suggesting that the manager should be sacked on twitter after the Brentford game.We have not yet fielded our strongest line-up yet and the new players needs time to gell let’s support the team and the manager until its abundantry clear that there’s no clear improvement. I have seen the light let’s support the manager until December,two games of the season and people are talking about relegation battle..
Stop defending Arteta! He’s not even a legend for us and him being our former captain means nothing as our manager! Use your head and what is shown on the pitch to judge him not with your heart and the amount of nostalgia it holds specially not for the side way passing arteta I still remember what names we used to call him! He was just another Xhaka with us! Arteta is not a good manager and not even close he’s all talk but can never back up his talk with anything real! He gets paid to do his job and he’s clearly failing it.. I’m tired of all the people defending Arteta for the worst and most predictable football I’ve ever seen in my life.. The results aren’t great either..
There is nothing Arteta has done to inspire confidence till date. However its all naive to ask for sack at this stage.
Arsenal board had a decision to make few months back.
A). Sack MA in May. Get in a new manager and back him in transfer market. Or.
B). Back MA for some more time, give him resources to improve. If still nothing improves change the manger.
Decision was already made. Option B chosen. 130 million spent.
Now what we all want is that we evaluate if option B decision was right decision or not on basis outcome of 2 games. It’s not wether option A should have been choose over B. That was the question few months back. Success don’t come regretting past decisions , it is based on taking right decision and at time correcting them timely.
Despite my lack of respect for MA, decision has to be made keeping emotions out and evaluation outcome of backing him in transfer market basis performance, not 2 games performance.
The manager has to field the strongest line-up obviously he knows fans want his head.This game can be used to burn the rusty players Laca,auba and odegaard have to start.I predict an easy win for the Arsenal today.coyg
Arsenal to lose 1-0.
I cant see us beating a championship team considering we were dominated by one in our 1st game.
Team selection has been an overwhelming problem at this club for some time, especially when it comes to Cup games where most “bigger” clubs have traditionally used these types of matches as an opportunity to give some younger prospects, cover players or those returning for a rehab assignment significant minutes…whether to simply aid in the developmental process or to keep more established cover players sharp, one must not underestimate the value of these opportunities from an organizational perspective…not to mention, these kinds of games can help to stabilize or even greatly enhance market values of those players who don’t receive many first team opportunities
unfortunately, the real problems crop-up when the manager is either under considerable pressure or questions regarding recent form are being bandied about…for the better part of 6-7 years these two aforementioned issues have led to a myriad of problematic selection-based decisions on the part of our managers, both past and present, as short-term returns, from a position of perceived desperation, has, more often than not, taken precedence over the big picture
the added variable this year is the fact that without European football, our manager is under considerably more pressure to play his Best 11 as much as humanly possible, even though some would suggest that he doesn’t even know what that lineup looks like, and to win something along the way…furthermore, there’s no doubt, in the back of his mind, he’ll be thinking about his questionable FA Cup team selection choices last year, under the guise of his seemingly misguided pursuit of European places, even though it appeared far more likely that we might have been able to defend our FA title
with this in mind, this is when we get to a true measure of our manager’s convictions, as it’s my belief that all his talk of the “process” was little more than a desperate back-up plan concocted out of necessity when it was clear that his ill-advised “retool” shortcut failed miserably last off-season…so if he’s truly dedicated to this so-called youth movement, this game today should definitely reflect that sentiment, regardless of his more selfish immediate concerns
the one saving grace he has going for him is that the WestBrom manager has stated unequivocally that his priority is the Championship and as such his lineup will reflect this desire, so if we play a predominantly first team side against their second-teamers, Arteta better hope to God that we run up the score or things could get really messy, really quickly
Whomever we start, i hope we win
It will be an emphatic win for arsenal today no doubt
I’d play the reserves and youngsters. His job doesn’t rely on a carabao cup match win and I doubt West Brom will field higher than rotational players either.
MA must put out a team strong enough to win this game, simple as. If we lose tonight then bomb against City his tenure must surely be hanging by a thread. Put out a strong team and I see us winning by 2 or 3 goals, if not, well ?????
Arteta must use strong team today because losing this game will send a bad signal and it will affect him going by the challenges the club is facing presently. The only reason he can rest the player is to avoid injury because of City game
Good looking team we definitely get goals tonight….
Well ESR is going to find out where he stands. I suspect Odegaard, the Golden Boy. will play.
I think, if he has any smarts at all, Arteta will keep Ramsdale as far away from EPL games as he can. So Ramsdale for the cup matches.
He probably has to play Tavares, to give Tierney a chance to rest his leg.
This will be a good chance to play some of the guys who are in the shop window.
So I think Kolasinac might play, and our new Window Dummy Aubameyang should play.
Good time to give Elneny a run out too.
As for the rest – who cares