It’s fair to say that the Carabao Cup is a long way down the list of priorities for Arsenal fans this season.
With the Gunners sitting top of the Premier League, the League Cup feels less relevant than ever. However, Mikel Arteta insists that while it’s chance to give a chance to some players to show their stuff, he’ll still pick what he calls a ‘competitive’ team.
Speaking to the official website, the Arsenal boss said, “We’re going to pick a very competitive team. I think everyone deserves chances, and we’ll make some changes with judgement in relation to the load of the players, but we’ll play to win.
“The ones that haven’t played want to have their chance, and feel that they are contributing to the team.
“The positive thing is that everybody has played games and everyone has been important. We have two games to go, and the focus has to be there because we know that afterwards we have a big break.
“It is a different competition but the purpose is the same, to play as good as we can, win the game and go into the next round.
“You know there are no second chances and we’ll take it very seriously.”
Nevertheless, players like Matt Turner, Cedric, Rob Holding, Mohamed Elneny, Fabio Vieira and Eddie Nketiah could all feature tomorrow night – and perhaps we might see a Hale End graduate or two on the bench to maintain the tradition of providing opportunities to young players in this competition.
Defender Gabriel will have time off over the World Cup, unfortunately for him, so get him in too.
Odegard too.
And a Haaland.
Really hope to see Ethan Nwaneri after another outstanding display for the u18’s this weekend.
So great that Jack is there to oversee his progress.
No one understands what Ethan is about to go through better than Jackie.
Exciting prospect of course but I’d rather give another opportunity to Nelson and/or Marquinhos as they may be needed for the first team later in the season.
Nwaneri won’t be in the squad tonight but his time will come, cream rises to the top.
Please don’t…. I wouldn’t mind going out at this stage to free up recovery time post WC.
We haven’t got the squad for everything so winning the PL and Europa will have to do this year 🫠
Yes please, keep that mentality even if team is full of kids 😀
Yeah, full of kids is fine, just don’t risk any key players before Wolves pls ⚡️
Spot on.
I don’t give a fig about the league cup
We must focus on the premier league and the Europa league
We don’t play in Europe again for 4 months.
Winning begets winning, you basically want to throw away a game and a chance at a trophy because of a few more games next year. We’ll have ESR and a couple of new signings by then COYG!
The thing with winning mentality is that there’s no halfway to it. You either have a culture of winning or just hope to do a decent job and be as high up the losers’ list as possible. We’ve all hoped that it would change. And now, when we see that it finally shifts, the goal for every single bloody game is singular. Win. Nothing else.
Have to disagree. Go for everything, is how you win things; is how a “winning mentality” works 😉 To win it, innit?
No guarantees we’ll win either the PL or Europa League. The League Cup is still an opportunity to win a trophy. The best teams fight for every piece of silverware.
Turner (or is he still injured?)
Cedric, Holding, ?, Tierney
Vieira, Elneny, Sambi
Nelson, Eddie, Marquinos
Hopefully some youngster will get an opportunity in the second half. Nwaneri was not in the training pics, so he probably won’t feature.
That XI is fine with me, I’d have Gabriel in for the ? CB spot as he isn’t going to Qatar.
Having said that, I think MA will pick a stronger team as he generally has in the past.
That 11 is a bit too weak and would likely lose to Brighton, whom will probably play their first 11 as they’re not in Europe.
Swap Cedric and Marquinhos for White and Odegaard.
One of Saka or Martinelli or Jesus will start. Mikel never leaves all 3 out at the same time .
These guys need to play and this is a joke of a cup on a good year. If they win, great. If they lose, who cares. This needs heavy rotation.
I cannot wait for this world cup to be over and to get back to premiership football – I haven’t even bothered to see who they are playing.
This WC is all wrong.
Even Sepp Blatter, the criminal, has now come out and said so.
The problem there is that the only thing that’s wrong, from his perspective, is that he’s not getting a cut of the loot.
For every single minute of football that would be played, there’s a couple of people who died because of the heat, malnutrition or inhumane treatment. I can’t bring myself to celebrate or to follow this in any shape or form, no. I’m not even sure about the final. It just feels so fucking wrong. The only thing that I dream about at this point is a collective federation walkout from corrupt cunts at FIFA. Mr. Infantino spoke with a glow in his eyes and Putin’s dick in his mouth when he told that the world discovered a different, welcoming country,… Read more »
Let’s win the League and Carbao Cup !
It would be something to win the League Cup in the 30th anniversary since the last time we won it.
It is going to be a difficult game. Brighton will be up for it, I am certain. If we learned anything from the EL group games, it’s that there is so far we can go in changing personnel if we want a strong performance.
I won’t be surprised if Arsenal loses this game, unless we pick as close to our first team as we possibly can.
Well at least one less competition to think about