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[Photos] 10 youngsters make the trip as Arsenal name squad for FC Vorskla clash

By on November 28, 2018

Unai Emery has called-up 10 young guns as a 20-man Arsenal squad flew-out of London Luton Airport this afternoon ahead of our Europa League clash with FC Vorskla.

With qualification to the knockout stages secured, the boss has rested all our key players ahead of Sunday’s huge North London Derby with the likes of Sokratis, Hector Bellerin, Lucas Torreira, Granit Xhaka, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette being saved for the Tottenham game.

It means there were several places in the squad needing to be filled and Emery has called up 10 of our U23 players with Tyreece John-Jules, Bukayo Saka, Zech Medley, Jordi Osei-Tutu, Deyan Iliev, Charlie Gilmour and Dominic Thompson all named in the travelling party along with Eddie Nketiah, Joe Willock and Emile Smith Rowe.

The youngsters all trained with the first team at London Colney before flying out to the Ukraine this afternoon. Nketiah is expected to start up front while Smith Rowe should also get another chance to impress but the rest of the boys will be vying for places on the bench.

Petr Cech, Aaron Ramsey, Mohamed Elneny, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Stephan Lichtsteiner add some much-needed experience to the team while Ainsley Maitland-Niles, Rob Holding, Carl Jenkinson and Matteo Guendouzi are also expected to feature tomorrow night.

It’s obviously going to be an experimental line-up against Vorskla but I’m glad to see Emery hasn’t taken any risks with our star players as we have two huge Premier League games against Tottenham and Man Utd coming up over the next week.

Let’s just hope the long-haul journey wasn’t pointless as Vorskla are suggesting they can’t guarantee they can fulfill the fixture after UEFA switched the games location to Kiev amid on-going unrest between Ukraine and Russia.

I’m sure it will all get sorted in the end so let’s just hope we manage to bring home a positive result to secure first place in Group E.

Here is the confirmed squad and some photos of the players travelling to Ukraine earlier today: