It’s EFL Cup action tonight as we face Southampton at the Emirates. As ever with this competition, there are lots of changes to the team.
Here are the official line-ups.
Arsenal: Martinez, Jenkinson, Gabriel, Holding, Gibbs, Coquelin, Elneny, Ramsey, The Jeff, Iwobi, Lucas
Subs: Macey, Bola, Bielik, Maitland-Niles, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Mavididi
Southampton: Forster, Yoshida, van Dijk, Bertrand, Clasie, Davis, Martina, Reed, Boufal, McQueen, Long
Subs: Lewis, Cedric, Rodriguez, Ward-Prowse, Hojberg, Stephens, Sims
here’s to a solid game from Lucas up front!
Why we only have 6 players on the bench?
Oxlade-Chamberlain and Maitland-Niles’s names were too long, there was no room left.
Xhaka
Xhaka not in there. Wenger resting him for the weekend?
I hope so
Just saw on Arsenal’s facebook Xhaka is on the bench
Strong looking saints team. If we can beat them, with this side, it will be mightily impressive
damn..that saints team does look impressive. they have a good squad
I don’t think they’ve rotated that much. It’s going to be a real challenge to win tonight, fingers crossed for a positive performance at least!
not sure what to make of increasingly negative tactics by wenger . we are literally playing most of the games with two holding midfielders. santi was the only attacking player to regularly play in centre midfield , and ramsey played once too. we could’ve played maitland niles today.
but im happy to see more of aaron ramsey. hope he gets back to the form that made him the best centre midfielder in that one season. we need players like him to step up if we’re to challenge for the league
‘holding midfielder’ is a limited term to use. What I find interesting is that both of those players play very much on the front foot, pressing opponents higher up the pitch. Coq does this well with Santi actually sitting behind, Elneny did it well with Xhaka behind him on Sunday. Will be interesting to see which one of them does that tonight and which sits deeper.
My main worry is who is the distributor in that team? Doesn’t look like many players in there who like to ‘pass between the lines’.
the problem with playing elneny and coqueline is that they dont have the guile and technique of santi or ramsey . so the midfield will be cutoff from the attacking players and we will be creating no chances in the game …just like united game.
playing players like ramsey can solve this problem. but wenger is choosing not to play ramsey there. its not a trust issue as ramsey clearly played against psg , its something else and i cant imagine what that is
Agree – the decisive passer is a bit lacking on paper. Elneny is actually quite good at the Arteta – like possession passing though when that’s his charge. So I’m guessing we’ll see Coq as the presser / dm and Elneny as the tempo passer / deep lying distributor (more or less).
Are we sure Iwobi won’t play #10?
Bola Bielik? Boilk.
Jenkinson and Gibbs supporting Iwobi and The Jeff on our flanks.
Lol. We are going to get spanked.
whoa, almost guessed the starting 11 a few days ago. I had Ox starting instead of the Jeff.
Pretty young bench so hopefully the starters get ‘er done! Southampton fielding a pretty strong side.
COYG!!! Keep the streak going.
Hello, theres a name I didnt see before, Mavadidi! Is he as good as he sounds?
I guess the electronic version of Bola in the virtual world of Fifa, Football Manager etc will be E-Bola.
Atleast s’Hampton rested some of the key players too
Let go for the kill
#COYG
Really excited to see this group play especially Holding, Lucas and the Jeff as we haven’t seen them for a while. Nice youthful group with some good experience in the squad. Should be a nice wide open, fast faced match which are always the most enjoyable.
Any chance of a live blog today? And does anyone know of a decent stream?
No Zelalem?
Can see us getting Destroyed but hopefully im wrong..
I think Wenger sees Ramsey as a central attacking midfielder, but Ozil rarely gets rested.
Please no. Iwobi can be much better than ramsey at 10
Wow! I guessed the entire lineup correctly, except Ramsey for The Ox.
I should go into coaching. I think I’ll start with Oxford United
Jenkinson is a a joke
He tries very hard, heart is in the right place.
But he is technically limited. Its not what we need.
Chambers is a better bet for the future IMO. Debuchy when he came on before hobbling off again (poor bugger) was night and day to Jenko.
A lot is made of Jenkinson’s crossing but he whips them in blind.
I’d rather play Gabriel at Rback to be honest. He has a bit more guile about him. Jenko lacks imagination and composure…aside from technicality.
…it’ll be unpopular with certain people but its the honest truth…just like Flamini is/was a better player than Elneny (just a bit old).;)
Sell Jenkinson in January
Utter dog-shit first half from us…
Can someone tell what happened to Elneny? Why Xhaka came on? Did he got injured or what? I missed that part cause of my shity stream.
Just saying some people like to big up Elneny but he is an average player at best (albeit he can improve and seems to be working at it) The same people tend to diss Flamini last season but alongside the difficult to play with Ramsey, they held together a crucial period when we were bereft of some of our better assets. We beat City and also got the business done with Olympiakos. When the goals dried up (ironically when some of our attacking assets returned in Feb), Ramsey tried to go more cavalier to make up for the short fall… Read more »
I’d play the Ox at some stage.
He’s another one who needs a run of games to get consistent.
how does ramsey get a game nowadays. nicking a living
the commentator on BeIng said Arsenal could be playing all night and they still wouldn’t score…what a shower…the usual suspects…my Sunday League Team would have played better than this…