Arsenal go into tonight’s Europa League tie against Red Star Belgrade at the Emirates with a 100% record in the competition so far, despite displaying a completely different line-up to our Premier League matches. Arsene Wenger has made it clear that this policy will not be changed. “No, because both of the teams do well,” Le Prof said.
“Even in training, when we play them against each other, it’s very tight. I’ve gone into a rotation policy and I want to stick to that at the moment. I must say that I am pleased with the quality of our performances in every single competition.
“I’m not tempted [to play Alexis, Ozil and Alex Lacazette] because I have another trio who will play on Thursday night, like Walcott, Wilshere and Giroud. It’s very difficult to make a [change].
“They all want competition, they all deserve competition because of their quality. If you look at the number of minutes played by all of these players since the start of the season, many of them are in very competitive shape and that should be an advantage of us for the rest of the season.”
So Wenger thinks that both of our teams are as good as each other? Let’s look at both line-ups….
This is the team that played Swansea at the weekend:
Cech
Koscielny, Mertesacker, Monreal
Bellerin, Kolasinac, Xhaka, Ramsey
Ozil, Sanchez, Lacazette
And this is my expected line-up for tonight’s game:
Ospina
Debuchy, Chambers, Holding
Nelson, Coquelin, Elneny, Maitland-Niles
Walcott, Wilshere, Giroud
So, if Wenger decided to swap these teams in the future so that Alexis et all played in the Europa League, do you think our reserve team would give Man City as hard a game as our First XI would? Or is there just a couple of players that we should swap to increase our strength?
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