Morning. Arsenal are in Champions League action this evening, and while there’s still room for Mikel Arteta to rotate his squad, we go into this one without two players who would likely have started the game. The manager confirmed that both Martin Zubimendi and Piero Hincapie picked up injuries in a small-sided game that took place after the win over Leeds on Saturday. He said: We had a training session planned after the game for the players that didn’t have enough minutes to give everybody the recovery day on Sunday, and to get everybody in the right rhythm. In two very unfortunate actions, we lost two players, and yeah, not great. And on time-frames for both: They’re both going to miss tomorrow’s match, that’s for sure and today they’re going to have a further scan. Tomorrow we’ll know more. Then we’ll see how they’re going to go. Piero’s one looks a little bit more serious I think, but we’ll have to wait and see. To lose one player in a warm down is unfortunate, to lose two feels borderline careless, although these incidents could just as easily have happened in a normal training session. I’m pretty sure that Zubimendi would have come into the side to allow Declan Rice to sit this one out (at least from the start), and Hincapie for Riccardo Calafiori obviously made sense to manage the load on the Italian who has had injury issues of his own in the past. So, without these two players, he’s got some thinking to do. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see Rice start again with a view to managing his minutes with a second half substitution, and if Myles Lewis-Skelly is asked to do a job at left-back, that would probably make some sense. We have Eberechi Eze, Mikel Merino and Bruno Guimaraes who didn’t start against Leeds available for midfield roles this evening, so the depth is there if he does want to use it. Eze could also be a candidate for the left, but perhaps he’ll be thinking of trying to see what Noni Madueke can do with a run of games on that side. Personally, I’d like it to be Eze, let Madueke start from the right, and after a poor game from Bukayo Saka (after which I think criticism of him was a bit overblown and veered into some downright unpleasant stuff), giving him a little rest before a tricky visit to Nottingham Forest might not be a bad idea. Then we have the striker decision. I think we know Mikel Arteta’s outright preference between Kai Havertz and Viktor Gyokeres, but I’d be quite worried for the Swedish international if he didn’t get the nod tonight. Havertz wasn’t great on Saturday, it’s not as if he put in the kind of performance that absolutely demands to start the next game, and as I said before Leeds, it’s Arteta’s job to get Gyokeres going. Once he’s on the pitch the responsibility lies with the player himself, but unless you give him that opportunity to play, there’s little he can do to change the trajectory of his season thus far. I can’t say I’m his biggest fan, but I want to see him start this evening. I hope he can deliver a performance and goals that will be beneficial to the team on the night, and going forward because we have a lot of football to play and having a centre-forward in the doldrums and on the outs with the manager is far from ideal. Arteta also spoke about going one better in this season’s Champions League, and this evening’s opposition: We know how tough it is and how many times we’ve done it in the history of our club. So first of all, realise that, and tomorrow we’re going to have a really tough opponent in front of us. They are very, very well coached. What Davide has done is, I think, remarkable. You can just see the way that they are competing and playing and the problems that they have caused big teams, and tomorrow is not going to be different until we are ready for it. So let’s see what kind of problems they will try and cause us later. A 40 year old Olivier Giroud in the Lille squad adds a little something to proceedings, and regardless of his time at one particular club, to be still playing as a striker at that age is quite remarkable. Perhaps his reception will be mixed, but hopefully he has a quiet game and the most we see from him are some waves to the crowd at full-time when his team has been comprehensively beaten. Right, I’ll leave it there for now. As ever, we’ll bring you live blog coverage of the game later, as well all the post-game stuff on Arseblog News like the match report, player ratings, manager reaction, quotes round-up and more. For something to listen to ahead of kick off, we have an episode of The 30 on Patreon, which is heavy on the Man City stuff, but there’s also some actually entertaining football to discuss too. Don’t forget the updated Arseblog apps also have a cool new matchday centre, full of stats, alerts, and much more. Catch you later for the game. The post Double injury complicates selection but still room for rotation against Lille appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.