Who comes in for Saka as we prepare for Ipswich?

Morning all.

We’re back in action this evening when Ipswich come to town, and the major talking point is what Mikel Arteta is going to do in the absence of Bukayo Saka. I thought he was quite interesting in his press conference on Monday, saying:

We have to look internally at what we have and be creative, do a very good exercise again. How can we mould the squad? How can we adapt to the circumstances and be different? We cannot pretend to be the same. We’re going to have to be different and try to find the best way to do it and be very competitive and win a lot of games.

Just to be clear, I think Bukayo Saka is a hugely important part of this Arsenal team, but perhaps not as difficult to replace as one or two others. Which is to take nothing away from him, because he is easily the most consistently productive forward we have, but as we saw when Martin Odegaard wasn’t available, we didn’t have a natural replacement in the squad (or at least one the manager deemed ready for that level of playing time and responsibility).

For Saka, you can play Gabriel Martinelli there – as we did against Crystal Palace to good effect – and he has played there for us before. Gabriel Jesus has played out there plenty of times in his career, and I don’t think it’s impossible that you could ask Leandro Trossard to fill in at times either. Obviously we’ll miss Saka, no question, but I don’t think his absence should impact the style of play as much as Odegaard’s did. The one player I’m most curious about though is Ethan Nwaneri, and whether or not we might see him deployed a bit further forward than normal.

Is Ipswich at home a good opportunity to give that a try? Without taking anything for granted, it’s a home game against a team who are struggling, so there is an argument to be made you could ‘risk’ Nwaneri there to see how it goes, and if it doesn’t work out you turn to your bench. If he goes well there though, you’ve got another option available to you that perhaps you didn’t really consider before. My gut feeling is that today he’ll go with Martinelli, but I wouldn’t be at all averse to see the 17 year old there from the start.

That decision might depend who is picked at right back. Jurrien Timber is on 4 yellow cards, so a booking in one of next two games before the threshold is increased would see him pick up a one game suspension (Gabriel Jesus is in the same boat, btw). If that’s something the manager is considering, we could see Thomas Partey at right-back, but we’ll have to wait and see.

There are midfield options with Declan Rice, Mikel Merino, and Jorginho, and it’ll be interesting to see who plays at left-back. Myles Lewis-Skelly has done very well, but Riccardo Calafiori is back. Perhaps they might view this game as a way to ease the Italian back into first team action with another cameo from the bench. The upcoming schedule is ridiculous as we know, so I’m sure they’ll be cautious not to overplay him after a return from an injury hit start to his Arsenal career.

Whatever team he picks though, we have a job to do today, and while three points were always paramount, after yesterday’s results there’s an opportunity for us. Liverpool keep winning, but Chelsea lost late, Nottingham Forest won (haha) and currently sit above us, while Man City dropping more points means we have a chance to extend our lead over them as we head towards the second half of the season. We can go second with a win today, so fingers crossed we can do just that.

Right, I’m gonna leave it there for now. We have a preview podcast available right now on Patreon. Join us later for live blog coverage, plus you’ll get the match report, goal clips, reaction, player ratings and much more over on Arseblog News.

Until then!

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