3 – Who starts against Brighton?
The beauty in this crazy new fixture schedule is that when something like last night happens, we don’t have to wait too long until we’re back in the dreamland of building up to another 90 minutes of football.
Really and truly, it’s difficult to pick out many star performers from the City game. It’s always going to be impossible to stand out when the other team control 95% of possession.
In my eyes, the highly underrated Bernd Leno stopped it from becoming an embarrassment, so unsurprisingly he becomes my first name on the team sheet as Arsenal head South for Saturday’s 3pm kick off.
Kieran Tierney was also a welcome revelation at left-back, and whilst it’ll take time for him to get back into the swing of things, having a young player like him running up and down the left flank is something I think we’ve been screaming out for since Ashley Cole.
Another player I don’t think we can drop is Eddie Nketiah. The striker did nothing wrong last night and when he did get the ball, he managed to control his position well given he had 5 City defenders surrounding him at all times. I think we could be seeing the makings of life after Alex Lacazette coming to fruition here.
One player I did want to highlight is someone who didn’t get a look in last night, Nico Pepe. The winger would’ve been a spare part in a game like last night, so I’m not shocked that Arteta wants to keep hold of the £72m man, who will have fresh legs against a Brighton side who haven’t kicked a ball competitively since early March.