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My Preferred Arsenal Line-Up To Face Marseille

By on September 17, 2013

It’s Champions League time! This is what we battled so hard for last season. This is why we widely celebrated Koscielny’s goal away at Newcastle on the final day (that, and we’d finished above Spurs for the 1000th season in a row).

We kick off away at Marseille on Wednesday and we had some good injury news ahead of the game with Olivier Giroud, Per Mertesacker and Mesut Ozil all being passed fit to play.

Giroud was a huge worry after he was forced off on Saturday with a knee injury but he took part in training on Tuesday morning and has made the trip to France.  He was joined by Ozil who shook off some tight muscles sustained after his superb performance against the Black Cats and Mertesacker is also back in contention after recovering from illness.

So here is my preferred starting line-up for the game:

There are two changes from the side that beat Sunderland. In comes Mertesacker at the back in place of Jenkinson, who drops to the bench. The other change is more controversial as I’d like to see Nacho Monreal come in for Mathieu Flamini.

Flamini did very well at the weekend but with Jack Wilshere playing on the left we looked a little unbalanced at times as he kept drifting inside to link up with Ozil, and I think we could be exploited down that flank if Jack starts out wide again.

For this reason I’d play Monreal, a naturally left-footed player, in front of Gibbs to solidify the left hand side of the pitch. He would offer great cover for when Gibbs bombs forward and I think it would make us a far more solid outfit away from home in a tough European game.

Plus, I don’t think we’ll get the best out of Wilshere playing him out wide, so let’s see how a midfield trio of him, Ramsey and Ozil does.

What do you think? What would be your line-up?

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