Admittedly Arsenal’s priority has to be fixing their utterly horrendous league form, but any win can build momentum and it could be huge if they find a way past Man City in the Carabao Cup this week.
City have shown they’ll give chances to a couple of young players in the competition but they generally take it seriously, although Arsenal may need to hope that the busy festive schedule will lead to multiple changes.
Mikel Arteta will have a similar decision to make although his “star” players have been letting him down for weeks so it could be a good thing to heavily rotate the team and see what the fringe players can do.
READ MORE: Gary Neville makes worrying claim about problem Mikel Arteta is facing at Arsenal
One of the biggest stories this season surrounding Arsenal has been Aubameyang – it was such a huge deal when he signed his new contract in the summer, but he’s largely been dreadful this campaign.
Some of that is down to Arteta trying to be overly clever and playing him on the right wing at times, but his form has also deserted him and they urgently need him to bounce back.
That won’t happen against City after it was confirmed that he’s not recovered in time:
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has still not recovered from a muscle injury and will miss Arsenal’s Carabao Cup quarter-final with Manchester City ? pic.twitter.com/gKLNVI0DCg
— Goal (@goal) December 21, 2020
There’s no point in forcing him to play when he’s lacking confidence and short of fitness, but they really need him to look like his regular self as soon as possible.