Arsene Wenger maintained his imperfect record of being unable to win the League Cup in his entire Arsenal career as he saw his team getting outperformed and ousted yet again from the EFL Cup, when they hosted Southampton on Wednesday.
It shouldn’t hurt Arsenal’s league form though as was evident from Arsene Wenger’s team selection that reflected each and every precaution he took for their away game against West Ham in the weekend. Wenger made 10 changes from the team that won against Bournemouth and hopefully the EFL Cup sacrifice will pay off.
Arsene will have almost all first team players when they visit the London Stadium on Saturday and with Manchester City and Chelsea playing early that day, Arsenal will be hoping a favourable result to close the gap at the top of the League table.
Defence
Petr Cech will once again take his position under the bar after a rest in the midweek EFL Cup fixture. The Czech international has been Arsenal’s most reliable shot-stopper since arriving.
Arsenal are having a huge crisis in their right defensive flank with Bellerin out for the next 3 weeks, and with Mathieu Debuchy out for an unknown period and Carl Jenkinson in an unknown form, Wenger will again have to take the gamble with Gabriel Paulista in the right back position.
The other three at the back are more or less remaining the same from the match against Bournemouth with Laurent Koscielny, Shkodran Mustafi at the heart of the defence and Nacho Monreal in the left-back position.
