Arsenal are set to kick off their 2022/23 Carabao cup campaign on Wednesday evening as they welcome Brighton to Emirates Stadium. Mikel Arteta has hinted that he will name a strong team but it's likely there will be some minor alterations with some of the core group of players likely to be rested.
For the fifth consecutive week, Arsenal will be back under the floodlights for a mid-week game, although this time in the Carabao cup with the Gunners hoping to carry over their Premier League and Europa League form into another domestic competition.
Several Premier League clubs played their third round fixture on Tuesday with the match between Bournemouth and Everton at Vitality Stadium seeing 20 combined changes to their respective starting teams, but Arteta has admitted he will not do that.
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Speaking ahead of the game, he said: "We’re going to pick a very competitive team. I think everyone deserves chances, and we’ll make some changes with judgement in relation to the load of the players, but we’ll play to win."
The Gunners are coming off the back of a remarkable win at Stamford Bridge in the Premier League on Sunday and will be aiming to finish the domestic season on a high before the World Cup break with fixtures against Brighton and Wolves.
Very rarely did Arteta make wholesale changes between matches in the Premier League and Europa League, often relying on a core group of players alongside certain members of the squad on the fringes of the first team. While it's possible he may change his approach regarding not playing his more important first-team players, following the injury to Bayern Munich's Sadio Mane on the eve of the World Cup, it's likely we will see a similar line-up to last week's game at Emirates Stadium between Arsenal and Zurich.
Mohamed Elneny is probably the biggest guaranteed starter but he may have perhaps been surpassed by both Gabriel Jesus and Marquinhos who have both promoted the fixture on their respective Instagram accounts which usually alludes to their likely inclusion.
Jesus, who was called up to Brazil's World Cup squad on Monday, has missed just one game so far this season for the Gunners while Marquinhos has not featured since the Europa League win over Bodo/Glimt nearly a month ago.
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