After Monday night’s awful defeat at the hands of Sheffield United, we face Portuguese side Vitoria in the Europa League at home on Thursday evening.
The team news is good, and the only player missing from the squad will be Reiss Nelson, who is out until November with a knee ligament injury that he picked up against Average Liege earlier in our Europa League campaign.
Other than Nelson, everyone else is available for selection, but it’s like that Emery will revert back to a younger side for the game, resting his first team players ahead of the Palace game on Sunday afternoon at The Emirates.
It remains to be seen whether Mesut Ozil has done enough in training/recovered from illness* this week to feature in the game. However, it looks like Tierney, Holding, Mustafi and Bellerin could all play in defence, having all been left out of the league defeat on Monday.
*delete as appropriate.
If we can win this game against Vitoria, we’re almost certain to qualify for the next round of the Europa League having already won our first two. This would mean that Emery can rotate and rest some of his fringe players, such as our highest earning, CREATIVE player who has only featured in about 3 minutes of the 24 games where we have failed to CREATE many chances.
After this game, we can make amends for the Sheffield United debacle with another home game against Palace on Sunday in the Premier League which we will no doubt find some new and creative way to mess up and ensure we drop yet more points.