Arsenal’s u23s are preparing for their first match against Derby at St. George’s Park on Monday, as Premier League 2 action gets back underway.

The u23s have seen some very good results in pre-season so far. The last of which was a 6-1 thrashing of Watford, but they also managed to beat the Leyton Orient and Boreham Wood first-teams 5-1 and 4-0. They’ll therefore be looking forward to getting back into the real action of the England youth sides’ top division.

Likely to be in contention for a start will be most of the players who went away on the pre-season tour with the Gunners, including Eddie Nketiah, Reiss Nelson, Cohen Bramall, Donyell Malen and Joe Willock.

Reiss and Joe have both also featured for the senior side since the return to the UK, but at this stage it doesn’t seem likely that anyone except perhaps Reiss will be making an immediate step up to the bench for the Gunners’ opening Premier League fixtures.

Malen and Nketiah will be hoping to benefit from the loan departure of Stephy Mavididi, who provided their main competition up front, and both have been scoring freely in the pre-season fixtures so far.

Meanwhile Krystian Bielik still hasn’t managed to secure a loan move away from the club, and Kieran Gibbs, Carl Jenkinson and Mathieu Debuchy haven’t agreed any permanent deals with anyone, so they are all still in contention as well.

Finally, we reported on Thursday that Jack Wilshere may be involved as he continues his recovery from injury, so he’ll likely be looking at the opportunity to make the next step towards first-team action.

Hopefully the u23s can get off to a strong start on Monday.