We are entering the most congested period of the Premier League calendar, and with both Tottenham and Arsenal both suffering from an extensive injury list neither side will want to risk adding to that in the third tier domestic trophy.
Right now Tottenham are reporting that Jan Vertonghen, Moussa Dembele, Serge Aurier, Victor Wanyama and Eric Dier are all out with various problems. Arsenal’s defensive crisis has been reported many times on here and there is no doubt that both sides will be rotating to some degree and it may just come down to which manager wants to win the Caraboa Cup more, and who will play the most first team players…
Pochettino has already announced that Gazzaniga will replace Hugo Lloris in the quarter final, and we know Cech will play in place of Leno. We have also seen Emery choose many youth players in Europa League games but he has always padded them out with many first team squad members and I fully expect our new boss to do the same again tomorrow.
I don’t think that Pochettino has the same desire to win this trophy. He is fighting to stay in the Top Four, and more importantly he has a massive game against Dortmund ahead in the Champions League. These are his major targets. While Arsenal have a very winnable game in the Europa League against BATE and have just dropped behind in the race for the Top Four and we all know it is not going to be easy for us get back in there unless one of our rivals go through a major blip. I think that Emery will be desperate to win any trophy in his first season, and although many people don’t rate this cup, it is still a trophy! Early I was looking at some random Arsenal bets and I noticed that the Gunners are 20/1 to land the Caraboa Cup and the Europa League. I think this could be very good odds with Emery’s ambitions at stake….
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