Arsenal will make the short trip to the Amex Stadium today to take on Brighton, and will do so with a near-full squad of options available.
The Gunners have already suffered a number of missing players throughout the early part of the season, with players testing positive for Coronavirus on top of players falling foul of other illnesses and injuries also, but we come into today’s match missing just one player.
Granit Xhaka limped off against Tottenham Hotspur last week as we went on to claim a 3-1 victory come the final whistle, and Arsenal are now expecting to be without their former captain for around three months. The 29 year-old suffered a knee injury, and scans found that he had also suffered a ‘significant injury to his medial knee ligament’, but that surgery would not be required as part of his rehabilitation as confirmed on their official website.
In fact, both sides are only missing just the one player as confirmed in Arsenal.com‘s official preview for the clash, with the Potters without centre-back Adam Webster.
Predicted Arsenal XI:
Ramsdale
Tomiyasu White Gabriel Tierney
Odegaard Partey Smith Rowe
Pepe Aubameyang Saka
This team was winning matches in the absence of Granit Xhaka most recently, and should be easy for the players to revert back into this weekend, although it wouldn’t be a huge shock if the manager did opt to bring Lokonga into the team this evening.
There has been more talk about Bernd Leno this week, but I simply can’t see why we would look to bring him back into the side at present, and he should be trying his best to find form in training to convince the manager that he deserves his shot, although at present it feels like it is Aaron Ramsdale’s place to lose.
Do you expect any other players to come into the manager’s thinking today?
Patrick