What the managers say
Arteta: “(Hodgson’s) teams are extremely well-organised and hard to beat. He’s really good at provoking things that he wants in the game and tomorrow is going to be a big battle for us, that’s for sure.
“We are recharged, full of energy and super motivated. The team is super motivated and we want to attack the second half of the season with a lot of ambitions and with the understanding that the team is capable of big things. They are convinced of that.” – read everything Mikel said in his pre-match press conference
Hodgson: “I’ve never taken a team to Arsenal thinking: ‘this is an easy one for us.’ It’s always been up against it really, the underdog, which we still are in this match as well.
“But I thought there were a lot of aspects to our play on Wednesday night which were very satisfying. I thought we carried out our gameplan pretty well and on another occasion, I think we’d have even got a result from that game. I do think we take a little bit of positivity from the Wednesday evening game into that game tomorrow with us.”
Team news
Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko missed our FA Cup tie with Liverpool last time out and it remains to be seen if they’ll be fit enough to play some part in this game.
Mohamed Elneny and Takehiro Tomiyasu are away with their national teams, Fabio Vieira and Thomas Partey remain out, while Jurrien Timber is back doing some light training but remains a long-term absentee.
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Jordan Ayew is with the Ghana squad at the Africa Cup of Nations, while Michael Olise will be missing for a few weeks with a hamstring injury, the same problem that has sidelined captain Joel Ward and Jesurun Rak-Sakyi, but the youngster returned to training this week.
