Arsene Wenger has provided the latest team news update ahead of Saturday’s Premier League clash with Liverpool.
The Gunners go into the game looking for a second successive Premier League win, following the 2-0 victory over Hull back on February 11th.
After going off injured in the 5-1 defeat to Bayern Munich, Laurent Koscielny is back in full training, while Aaron Ramsey, as reported yesterday, has also returned to the squad after suffering a calf strain against Watford in January.
Mohamed Elneny will miss three weeks with the ankle problem he sustained in the 2-0 win over Sutton United.
Mesut Ozil was missing from training yesterday, and asked about the German and if he’d be available, Wenger said, “We’ll see, I don’t know, he should be ok though.
“Olivier Giroud is back in the squad as well.”
On the Liverpool game, and winning away from home against one of the big sides,
“We have to focus on the way we want to play, to win, to fight, to show our quality,” he said.
“Our recent history being negative doesn’t help, but we have to be strong enough to deal with that.”
I’m not looking forward to this game at all …
It’d be very Arsenal to go out, play brilliantly and get a result now we’ve blown our title credentials and the pressure is off. Same for the Bayern game, I wouldn’t be surprised if we make them look ordinary. Always too little, too late unfortunately.
ah i like ur optimism… we’re gonna get beaten black and blue…
I always find comments about “now the pressure is off”, somewhat strange when it is applied to the Arsenal. Our players & manager (whoever they may be at any given time) are always under pressure to a greater or lesser degree, simply because they work & play for the Arsenal. You just have to observe the reactions – from the mainstream & social media – whenever the Arsenal either don’t perform well, or drop points, or loose a game, even if it’s a friendly. It’s very clear that, in this day & age, you cannot not be under pressure when… Read more »
Can’t help but have that ‘Chelsea/Bayern’ feeling before another massive game.
Scousers bound to be well up for it after Leicester defeat.
Can see another spanking coming our way… have a feeling they’ll tear us apart like they did on the opening day of the season. Hope I’m wrong though
To be honest, individual brilliance from Coutinho won them that game. Also, with a better defence this time round, I expect us to do better. I think if Bellerin is injured we should try with three at the back, but I guess this isn’t the game to experiment.
Oh, for goodness sake: on the first day of the season, we played without Koscielny and Mertesacker (and Mustafi). We didn’t have Sanchez, Ozil, Giroud, or Wellbeck (or Lucas).
Please Bergkamp let the good arsenal turn up!
Who is actually going to play? Ramsey hasn’t played in a while and Ozil is sick (on top of being out of form). I hope what with the extra preparatory time, the rest of the players are burning up the training pitch and the damn psychologist is earning his pay. Also, Xhaka and Coq out to be tied together at the waist till they figure out how to play on the same field.
Anfield is no picnic spot.
I’m itching like a junky for Welbeck and Lucas to start :-0
Agreed, it won’t happen though.
Watching the extended highlights of the Leicester v Pool game I think we should start Giroud and bombard them with Long balls.
Or did you watch another game, it was vardy and fast winger play that caused them many problems on counter which we will play also on counter as we all know klopp tactic pressing us for 90 min I hope for some great xhaka balls to open them up and of course trio of welbz alexis perez/walcott will do the damage I for one I’m really confident that we will win this one. They don’t have Henderson they firmino is out of form sturadge is injured lovren is injured mingolet on goal their defense is awful cutinho just came back… Read more »
Easy 3 points. COYG!!!
Just like when we played Watford, they had a terrible run which we managed to end for them.
Liverpool’s run has been similarly dire, let’s hope we can avoid another Watford.
Thumbs up for optimistically ignoring the general negative sentiment of this thread.
Let’s be having them. Liverpool there for the taking at the moment. There’s a Henderson shaped void seemingly consuming the rest of their side at the moment…
I now (also being realistic like everyone else on here) caveat this with the fact that klopp seems to only be able to motivate his team for big games so we’re going to be up against it.
Welbz to start for me.
Here’s to hoping Lucas starts for them again in CB!
And that he starts for us!
Ozil shouldn’t start this match no matter how fit he is
I wouldn’t like to watch his laziness and girlish runs against a very high pressing liverpool team at Anfield
What’s your problem with girls?
I don’t know about you, but my problem is keeping my lecherous eyes off of them. The way that Ozil runs about, well, it makes me feel sexually confused.
Paula Radcliffe. Discuss.
You guys have no sense of humor, you guys.
They are.always running away from him.
As long as our central defenders don’t go ducking corners again.
Is that autocorrect?
Every game arsenal prepare to play comes with uncertainty until the eventually the comes to an end
This means the team is lacking progression in terms of the technical
direction; this’s the reason wenger must go, he’ out of ideas for the team s philosophy ( old fashion)
Uncertainty is an inherent part of sport generally and football in particular, and is part
of the attraction.
It’s not unique to Arsenal.
If the result of a match was certain before it started, it wouldn’t be sport.
We can win this as long as we show some nous, sit back and hit them on the counter. Don’t play into their hands by allowing them to get in behind us. There at home and need the points.
Monreal vs Mane is one contest that gives me the nightmares. Nacho will need support from whoever is manning the left wing.
For this reason I hope it’s welbeck or Alexis. Please not Iwobi. He works hard on the pitch, but his defending is not up to scratch.
No Joe Allen or skrtel this time to bail pool out. Coyg
If we start well we’ll win. They are so short on confidence. Maybe even lower than ours.
Can’t see us getting anything up there, Leicester showed how to play them but as usual we’ll go up there with our high line and possession football and get caught.
Can see Mane ripping us to shreds, Nacho has had trouble v pace all year.
we know Liverpool will press us high up the pitch and contain us this does’nt suit us teams tend to dominate us even at home BUT if Leicester can do them at there own game we need to match them too, we tend to start off like that for 10 or 15 minutes then go back into reverse and consequently sit deep inviting pressure and ultimatally concede goals,to see if Wenger is learning new tricks this will tell us on his stratagies, But going by what he always says every press conference, “We have to focus on the way we… Read more »