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My Preferred Arsenal Starting XI To Face Aston Villa

By mac14 on January 10, 2014

We’re at Villa Park to take on Aston Villa on Monday night and the players will have revenge in mind following our 3-1 defeat to the Midlanders at the Emirates on the opening day of the season.

The big injury news of the week saw Theo Walcott cruely ruled out for the rest of the season after rupturing a cruciate ligament in his left knee during the final stages against Tottenham last Saturday.

Questions are now being asked about how Arsene Wenger is going to replace the England speedster and my personal view is that Santi Cazorla could switch over to the right side with Lukas Podolski starting on the left of our attacking three.

Serge Gnabry was excellent against the Spuds and I’d have no arguments if he started again on Monday, but I feel he’ll be among the subs along with Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain – who is fit again after recovering from his knee injury.

Mesut Ozil is back from his mini break and will start in the ‘hole’ behind Olivier Giroud – who is also available again after recovering from a minor ankle problem.

Thomas Vermaelen is out with a knee injury but Per Mertesacker and Laurent Koscielny would have started anyway. Kieran Gibbs has a small chance of featuring but Aaron Ramsey is out with a thigh strain.

Another big question is who will start in the centre of midfield and while Mikel Arteta is almost certain to play, I would prefer to see Mathieu Flamini given a run-out. With Jack Wilshere likely to start, we need some pace in midfield and Flamini is a lot quicker over the ground compared to Arteta.

So here’s the team I’d go with: