Arsenal Team News: Wenger Confirms Double Boost Ahead Of West Ham + Ramsey Update

Arsenal will look to book their place in the semi finals of the Carabao Cup when we take on West Ham at the Emirates in the last-8 tomorrow night.

Arsene Wenger hasn’t held a press conference ahead of the game but he has provided Arsenal.com with a team news and injury update as the boss looks to rotate his squad.

Aaron Ramsey has missed the last two matches after suffering a hamstring injury during the closing stages of our 1-1 draw with Southampton at St Mary’s last weekend.

Wenger has confirmed the midfielder is back running outside but will still not be fit until the start of January 2018 meaning he’ll miss the games against West Ham, Liverpool, Crystal Palace and West Brom.

The boss had better news on Shkdoran Mustafi as the centre-back is now considered fit and available for selection after recovering from a thigh injury that’s kept him out of the last three games.

However, the boss is set to give his fringe players a chance to impress tomorrow night so Mustafi will be given the night off and saved for Friday’s huge Premier League clash with Liverpool.

One player who is a confirmed starter against West Ham is Theo Walcott as Wenger says the attacker will return to the starting eleven after recovering from a minor groin injury.

The boss told the clubs website:

on Ramsey…
Ramsey was out running [on Monday] but he will not be back in the next 10 days. For him, the beginning of January is more likely.

on Mustafi…
Shkodran is back again. I will not use him on Tuesday but he’s available again.

on Walcott…
Theo is 100 per cent, he will play on Tuesday.

on his rotation plans…
Some players are a little bit on the edge. I think as well that we have so many quality players who did not start on Saturday, so you cannot say that you prefer to play a player who has played three games in six days to a guy who is at the same level and is completely fresh. The players who will start are basically all international players, so that’s why I think [squad rotation] makes sense. You have as well to show the trust and the confidence that we have in the players who did not start last week.

It’s a big blow to be without Ramsey over the busy festive period and it looks like he’ll be facing a race against time to be fit to face Chelsea on January 3rd at the Emirates.

It will be interesting to see what kind of team Wenger will put out tomorrow but I expect it will be similar to the line-ups we’ve seen in Europe so the likes of Per Mertesacker, Calum Chambers, Rob Holding, Mathieu Debuchy, Mohamed Elneny, Francis Coquelin and Olivier Giroud should all feature.