Arsenal hosts Manchester United in what is the weekend’s most hyped up Premier League fixture. Unfortunately, one of the biggest stars in this match, Gunners leading scorer Alexandre Lacazette, is ruled out with a groin injury. On the other sideline, United’s arguably best player this season, holding midfielder Nemanja Matic, is most likely not going to play either.
We’ll know more about Matic’s muscular injury tomorrow, and perhaps United Manager Jose Mourinho will fill us in on how long the Serbian maestro could be out during his weekly news conference.
In the meantime, we composed a combined starting XI for both teams, if both sides were in perfect full fitness. In our hypothetical XI, we choose the best players in a situation where everyone was in peak form.
It’s highly subjective and extremely debatable, with multiple snubs an unfortunate inevitability. Feel free to post your own combined XI in the comments section.
For the full injury report on both sides go to this link. For the MUFC starting XI prediction, go to this link.
Without further ado, here is our combined Arsenal and Manchester United XI for this match, in a 3-5-2 formation.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic Romelu Lukaku
Alexis Sanchez Mesut Ozil Anthony Martial
Nemanja Matic Paul Pogba
Shokdran Mustafi Laurent Koscielny Antonio Valencia
David de Gea
In attack, Sanchez and Ibrahimovic are no-brainers. You can’t leave either of them out, and you also want to provide a spot for either Lukaku or Lacazette. We opted for United’s Belgian over the Gunners’ Frenchman.
Other no-brainer choices included Matic, Pogba and Ozil, who seems to be regaining his form now. Arsenal Manager Arsene Wenger says this is due to the German finding the fight again.
We rounded out the middle of the park with Martial. Shifting to the back line, Mustafi has been excellent since he returned from injury, while Valencia has flourished since Mourinho took over for Louis van Gaal in 2016. He’s brought more stability to the right back position. Koscielny is one of the league’s more underrated defenders and his experience earns him a place in this eleven.
De Gea is clearly the choice in goal and that pretty much goes without saying.
Getting back to the actual match being played on Saturday, Arsenal are very slight favorites.
The bookies are showing the Gunners at 8/5 to win, 12/5 for a draw, and Manchester United at 83/41. That’s just about a pick’em there. We’ll have video of the two manager press conferences for you tomorrow.
Prediction: Arsenal 0, United 0
As always, feel free to post your own MUFC and/or Arsenal starting XI (and match final score) predictions in the comments section.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and the Tribune corporation blogging community Chicago Now.
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