There is one slight surprise for Arsenal fans in the starting line up of Arsene Wenger today, although the use of our England international left back Kieran Gibbs in a more advanced role on front of the Spaniard Nacho Monreal has been tried before and with a fair amount of success, although it is normally a move made by the manager to shore things up at the end of a game.
Gibbs certainly has an attacking frame of mind as he showed by getting forard and scoring the equaliser against the spuds in the north London derby a couple of weeks back. As expected the boss has not felt able to rest the dynamic Chilean forward Alexis Sanchez despite him playing the full 90 minutes in both of Chile´s international games.
Wenger has decided to rest our Costa Rican forward Joel Campbell though as the youngster also had international games and long haul flight s and was back even later than Alexis. Wenger clearly feels that Koscielny is in the right frame of mind to play as he starts alongside Mertesacker with Bellerin returning to the right back role.
Cech
Bellerin, Koscielny, Mertesacker, Monreal
Coquelin, Cazorla
Sanchez, Ozil, Gibbs
Giroud
Subs: Ospina, Gabriel, Debuchy, Arteta, Flamini, Reine-Adelaide, Campbell.
Watford have just done Arsenal a big favour by equalising against Man United so hopefully they can hold on and we can win to shift all the pressure top Man City. COYG