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Morning all.
There’s an exciting night ahead as we face Bayern Munich in the first leg of our Champions League quarter-final. It’s been a long time since we reached this stage of the competition, and it promises to be a challenging evening against opposition who have caused us plenty of problems and pain in the past.
Mikel Arteta wasn’t giving much away in terms of team news, but having played Brighton on Saturday evening, the turnaround time is fairly short. This is exactly the kind of scenario I’m sure he was thinking about when he spoke about top players having to play every three days.
I don’t envisage too much in the way of rotation, and if I had to guess, tonight’s line-up could be something like: Raya, White, Saliba, Gabriel, Tomiyasu, Jorginho, Rice, Odegaard, Martinelli, Saka, Havertz.
The changes come on the left-hand side where you could make the case this is more of a Tomiyasu game than a Zinchenko game, but I wouldn’t be that surprised to see him stick with the former Man City man either. As for Martinelli, they gave him a few minutes against Man City, some minutes against Luton, and a good half an hour against Brighton. I could be wrong, but it feels as if they were getting him ready for this one having suffered that injury and been sidelined for a few weeks. Those minutes were to get him back in, and hopefully find a bit of rhythm, because his explosiveness could be really useful in a game like this.
Gabriel Jesus’ record in Europe this season does make me wonder if he might give the manager some pause for thought, but the form of Kai Havertz means he’d have to play wide, and if Arteta can pick Saka and Martinelli together for the first time our 6-0 win over Sheffield United on March 4th I think he will.
As for tonight’s opposition, a lot has been made of their ‘difficult’ season. They’re not going to win the Bundesliga for the first time since 2012, but that’s as much do with the extraordinary season Bayer Leverkusen…
Source link : https://arseblog.com/2024/04/at-last-a-big-european-night-at-the-arsenal-stadium/
Author : arseblog
Publish date : 2024-04-09 05:42:47
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