Arsenal face Huddersfield Town in a Premier League clash at the John Smith’s Stadium on Saturday, as Unai Emery’s side try to get back into the top four.
Last time out, Arsenal had to travel to Manchester City, whilst Chelsea and Manchester United had comparatively straight-forward games against Huddersfield and Leicester. The roles are reversed this weekend, with Chelsea travelling to City and Arsenal taking on Huddersfield, though United have another easy game against Fulham.
As a result, Arsenal need to make sure they pick up all three points to bridge the gap to the Champions League places, and hope Manchester City are just as ruthless with Chelsea as they were last weekend.
Let’s have a look at our predicted lineup for the clash.
1Goalkeeper and Defence
Due to a number of illnesses, injury doubts and so on, this lineup is one of the hardest to predict this season.
Ainsley Maitland-Niles is back in training, but a strong doubt for this weekend. Laurent Koscielny struggled with sickness this week, whilst Konstantinos Mavropanos’ exclusion from the Europa League squad suggests he hasn’t quite won Unai Emery over to get a starting spot just yet.
Sokratis Papastathopoulos is also now in light training, but it’s probably too early for him to return. Hector Bellerin and Rob Holding are out for the season, of course.
Shkodran Mustafi is fit after a minor scare against Manchester City, and Sead Kolasinac will almost certainly keep his place on the left, so they’re the two most likely to start. Koscielny will hopefully be fine after training without any problems on Thursday.
On the right, Stephan Lichtsteiner was really poor last weekend, but Maitland-Niles still doesn’t seem ready to return. As a result, Carl Jenkinson may well be set for his first Premier League start with Arsenal since November 2016.
Bernd Leno should keep his place in goal as usual, although you do wonder if Emery might start giving Petr Cech chances in either the Europa League or the Premier League at some point, given the cup competitions are no longer an option.
Click ‘Next’ for Midfield, Forwards and the full Predicted Starting XI