Why on Earth do the media keep feeding us this rubbish? We have this headline in the Express this morning: Alexis Sanchez ‘will push for move back’ to Gunners as if this is a statement of fact, and to back it up they use the exact same line four times during the article.
Last night’s match may not have mattered much to Arsenal fans, but there were many positives during the game. All eyes were on Saka but just as important (given our defensive crisis) was the return of our captain Laurent Koscielny. The Bos himself was happy with his return. “Yes, it was an important day for me,” he told Arsenal.com. “It was the end of my rehab, so I am very happy to play today with my team, for this club, and to enjoy it with them on the pitch.
It was a very young Arsenal team that Unai Emery picked to play against Qarabag last night, and the big surprise package was the debut of the 17 year-old Bukayo Saka who looked very calm and assured, never mind extremely skilful!
We all knew that Unai Emery was going to pick lots of Arsenal youngsters for tonight’s game against Qarabag, and we certainly saw a lot of them in the starting line-up tonight. But it was one of our oldest players on the pitch (other than Koscielny lol) that scored our opening goal in Alexandre Lacazette.
So here we are with our last Europa League Group game, and we are sure to be making many changes.
So here is the team I predicted earlier…
Cech
Jenkinson Sokratis Koss Monreal
Elneny Guendouzi Maitland-Niles
Mhkitaryan Willock
Nketiah
And here is Emery’s confirmed team…
So tonight’s game may mean nothing in the grand scheme of things, but it will give the main Arsenal players the chance to have a rest from our gruelling fixture list, and also to give some of our youngsters a chance to impress Unai Emery in a real matchday atmosphere. And of course it gives Laurent Koscielny and Nacho Monreal a chance to gain a little bit more fitness as well.
Well there I was happily writing away at the Arsenal v Qarabag Preview when suddenly up pops the news that the young Gunner Emile Smith-Rowe was injured in training and is now set to miss tonight’s game and also the Caraboa Cup quarter final against Tottenham.
Goal reported it like this…..
The Arsenal boss Raul Sanllehi has already told us that he is not keen on the January transfer window except in emergencies, but it looks like that may be the case at the moment since Rob Holding’s season-ending injury occurred last week.