With the international break finally coming to an end, Arsenal have the chance to make it three wins in a row when they face Newcastle United this weekend.

The Gunners started the season with a couple of tough fixtures against Manchester City and Chelsea, and unfortunately couldn’t get anything from those matches. Nonetheless, they showed progress, and turned that into results with victories over West Ham United and Cardiff City.

Next up it’s a trip to St. James’ Park. Arsenal have Alex Iwobi available again after illness, but otherwise the squad is looking very similar to the Cardiff fixture in terms of injuries. Kolasinac, Maitland-Niles, Jenkinson and Koscielny are all still out, for the time being.

After correctly predicting Alexandre Lacazette’s first start of the season last time out, this time we’re expecting another of Unai Emery’s summer signings to get his full debut. Let’s have a look at our predictions:

Goalkeeper and Defence

Unfortunately for Bernd Leno, it doesn’t look like he’s going to get a debut of his own just yet. Four games in and Unai Emery still hasn’t shown any signs of dropping his first-choice, Petr Cech, so it looks like the 36-year-old will get another chance on Saturday.

Nacho Monreal will start at left-back, since there are still no other options right now. Hector Bellerin should keep his place on the other side, particularly as he’s had a rest over the international break, unlike Stephan Lichtsteiner.

Sokratis Papastathopoulos and Shkodran Mustafi will continue their centre-back partnership, after starting the first three games. Rob Holding and Konstantinos Mavropanos will presumably get chances alongside Leno in the cup and Europa League games.

Midfield

It must be #TimeForTorreira to get his first start by now. After surviving an injury scare early in the international break, the Uruguayan returned to take part in full training with Arsenal this week.

The midfielder continues to impress in his substitute appearances, and didn’t put a foot wrong in the win over Cardiff, providing the match-winning assist. Arsenal need a bit more cover down the right hand side, and Torreira is a bit more likely to provide it than the still inexperienced Matteo Guendouzi.

Granit Xhaka will play on the left, and I’d expect Aaron Ramsey to take the third midfield role in front of him. Mesut Özil could take up a central position with Henrikh Mkhitaryan on the right, but I sense Emery won’t want to change too much at once in the midfield.

Forwards

We had to wait a while to see Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette starting together, but when they did, they both delivered goals. As a result, I think it would be very difficult for Unai Emery to drop either of them.

Mesut Özil is most likely to start on the right. As mentioned in the midfield section, it’s possible Mkhitaryan plays on the right and Özil moves into the middle, but for now it seems Emery favours his star playmaker on the right with Ramsey’s energy to support the attack and defence.

Click ‘Next’ for the full starting eleven

Full predicted starting eleven