Arsenal were able to rest their entire starting eleven on Thursday night and Arsene Wenger is hoping that will help them beat Manchester City.

One benefit of the Europa League, if Arsenal ever wanted it, is the ability to rest their entire starting XI.

With any luck, this will be to Arsenal’s benefit on Sunday. Arsene Wenger certainly believes that the physical side of the game will be important.

Asked about City’s game against Napoli on Wednesday, Wenger told Arsenal.com: “Well, they had two games and again you could see that first half Napoli gave them many problems, but in the second half they dropped again physically.

“I think that’s because they’d played on Sunday night and Man City played on Saturday afternoon. You can see when the games are at that intensity, physical aspects become important.”

City played a number of their starters in what was an end-to-end and fast paced match against the Italians.

Arsenal, on the other hand, were able to rotate their entire team against Red Star Belgrade, a continuation of Wenger’s policy this season.

In all four games in the group stage so far, Wenger has changed his team completely.

So far, this rotation policy has worked well. In three Sunday matches following a Europa League match, Arsenal have won twice and drawn once.

City, though, have a deep squad and are used to playing multiple matches in a week.

The physical side of the game won’t come into play until the end of the match, when players might start feeling their mid-week exertions.

The hope is that Arsenal are still in the game to take advantage of that if/when it happens.