After another international break draws to a close, Arsenal restart their club action with a match away to Bournemouth on Sunday, looking to get back to winning ways after three league draws.

Arsenal’s last Premier League win was a month ago now, a 3-1 victory against Leicester City. After that, the Gunners picked up a couple more victories against Sporting Lisbon and Blackpool. In the league though, they dropped points unexpectedly to Crystal Palace and Wolves, and perhaps just as unexpectedly managed to pick one up against Liverpool.

High-flying Bournemouth won’t prove easy opposition to turn things around against, but it’s crucial that Unai Emery’s side manage to do so, in their last league warm-up game before the North London derby.

Let’s have a look at who we expect to start on Sunday.

Goalkeeper and Defence

In goal, Bernd Leno should keep his place, after a fantastic individual showing against Wolves. It’s only thanks to him that Arsenal’s unbeaten run didn’t come to an end, so Petr Cech will have to wait a bit longer for a return to the starting XI.

One player who is back available for Premier League starts again is Sokratis Papastathopoulos, which gives Unai Emery a bit of a selection dilemma.

Sokratis and Shkodran Mustafi haven’t started a match together since Everton in September. For that reason, it seems more likely Unai Emery will opt either for Sokratis and Holding, as seen in the recent Europa League match against Sporting Lisbon, or Mustafi and Holding, as in most Premier League matches recently.

We’re going to give Sokratis and Holding the edge on this occasion, as they’ve helped Arsenal to keep clean sheets in their last three matches together.

With any luck, Emery’s selection choices at centre-back are only going to get more difficult in the coming weeks, as Laurent Koscielny and Konstantinos Mavropanos return from injury.

On the right, Hector Bellerin will start as usual. Stephan Lichtsteiner is recovering from a hamstring injury and is a doubt to even make the squad this weekend. On the left, Nacho Monreal is still being eased back from injury, and he’s currently expected to return to training in two weeks, meaning Sead Kolasinac will keep his place in the team.

Click ‘Next’ for Midfield, Forwards and the full Starting XI

Midfield

Mohamed Elneny returned from injury with Egypt over the international break, but he’ll have to wait a bit longer for his first Premier League minutes of the season. Aaron Ramsey is in a similar situation, having featured for Wales but remaining out of favour in Emery’s starting lineups.

Mesut Özil is the obvious choice ahead of Xhaka and Torreira. Unless Ramsey finds his way back into contention for starts, there’s not really any reason for that to change anytime soon.

Click ‘Next’ for Forwards and the full Starting XI

Forwards

At the start of the international break, Arsenal were hit with the rather worrying news that Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang had both picked up knocks. However, it seems the Gunners were just taking precautionary measures, and both are back in full training.

Nonetheless, after Aubameyang’s tweet on Wednesday revealed he’s still ‘trying to get fit’, we have to assume Emery isn’t going to take risks with the club’s leading goalscorer. It wouldn’t be worth another injury with the Tottenham and Manchester United games so near.

Instead, Lacazette can start up front, with Alex Iwobi returning to his favourite position on the left, and Henrikh Mkhitaryan starting after his goal against Wolves. Aubameyang will hopefully still be available from the bench, to add to his four league goals as a substitute this season.

In all honesty, that front three will probably give Arsenal a better balance in attack anyway, as they struggled to make good opportunities in their last game, and Aubameyang missed the best chance of the bunch.

Click ‘Next’ for the full Starting XI

Full predicted starting XI