A mixture of Arsenal players, senior and youth, trained ahead of our Friday clash with French club, RC Lens. So, who will get the nod to start?

Per Mertesacker, Theo Walcott, Mohamed Elneny, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Alex Iwobi, Francis Coquelin and the newly promoted Jeff Reine-Adelaide are the only senior players to fully return to training from their summer break so far.

Although Petr Cech shared an Instagram picture of himself in the gym, it’s unlikely that he’ll join the others properly until a bit later.

Similarly, Granit Xhaka appears to have made his way somewhat closer to the training pitch and was pictured by Arsenal’s photographer, Stuart MacFarlane, sitting on some mats. Presumably somewhere in north London.

Thankfully for us, Stuart also managed to capture the players in training, which might give us an idea of who could start against RC Lens.

Although the starting XI is almost impossible to predict at this stage, given the mixture of players trickling back, we can almost definitely predict it’ll be a combination of old and new – as is the norm during most pre-seasons. We can also rule out the likes of Olivier Giroud, who is currently throwing himself into lakes, Alexis Sanchez, Aaron Ramsey, Laurent Koscielny and Mesut Ozil.

We have Emi Martinez, who will probably start in goal.

Nelson, Zelalem, Willock and Bielik and the most likely youth squad members to be starting, while Walcott, Coquelin, Elneny and the Ox will all also probably get a run out.