Arsenal fans are used to seeing Arsene Wenger give the Gunners youth players a chance to impress us all in the League Cup, but it seems that Le Prof has changed this policy and will now only be using players from the first team squad in the least important tournament we participate in.
There are currently 24 players in the first team squad, with four injured and one suspended, so there will be some of the team that faced Chelsea on the pitch. “It will affect it because at the moment the youth-team players, many of whom are ready to play for us, are away on loan,” Wenger said on Arsenal.com. “The next players who have the talent are not completely ready to play at that level. With the difficulty of the opponent as well, you do not want to throw them into a game where they look out of place.
“There are no fringe players [here], there is only a first-team squad. It is an opportunity for Arsenal to win an important game and for the players who play for the club to defend our club and qualify.
“Apart from that, we played with the team in Zagreb and we didn’t win, so we want to come back now and win our cup games because that’s vital for us.”
The reserves that played at Zagreb looked very rusty, especially in the first half. Hopefully they will be a little sharper after that run out and can improve against Tottenham, but it is obvious that our first team can’t sustain playing every 3 or 4 days for a month so there simply has to be changes….