Two high flying London teams will battle it out in the Capital One Cup fourth round tie tomorrow. Arsenal will be hosting Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea looking to beat them for the first time in over two years.
Both the teams continued their good run in the league with Arsenal winning from their tricky Crystal Palace trip on Saturday while Chelsea beat Manchester City 2-1 thanks to a blunder from Joe Hart which led to a 90th minute goal from Torres. Chelsea are two points behind league leaders Arsenal and will be going into the game just 48 hours after their match against City and Jose Mourinho has already voiced his concern about Chelsea’s tight schedule.
- Flamini to miss crucial games
As for as Arsenal’s team news is concerned there are still significant injury problems with Theo Walcott still out with his abdominal injury and long term absentees Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Lukas Podolski are continuing their rehabilitation work. Of-course the main worry concern would be Flamini’s groin injury. Having passed the fitness test, the French midfielder was allowed to start against Crystal Palace but was subbed off as early as the 6th minute and Wenger stated that it’s too early to give a precise return date for Flamini.
Meanwhile Mikel Arteta, who received a red card in the Palace game will be unavailable leaving the likes of Jack Wilshere and Serge Gnabry as confirmed candidates in the starting berth. It will be interesting to see what Wenger does with his big name players. The likes of Mertesacker, Ozil and Ramsey have played far too many games from the start of the season and looked a bit rusty in the weekend.
The league cup would very well be an invitation for few youngsters like Thomas Eisfeld, Ryo Miyaichi and Isaac Hayden and senior players like Thomas Vermaelen and Lukasz Fabianski who are sidelined to bench roles these days.
Here is a predicted line-up that we think Wenger might deploy tomorrow.
