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Shouldn’t we be saving Laurent Koscielny for Southampton?

By Utsav Mehta

Posted on December 12, 2018

Unai Emery confirmed in the Pre-match press conference that Arsenal are all set to start Laurent Koscielny against Quarabag in Europa League’s clash on Thursday, but shouldn’t we be saving him for Southampton?

Arsenal are facing bit of defending crisis after injury to Rob Holding, who is probably out of the season and they are now without Shkodran Mustafi and Sokratis Papastathopoulos who will serve suspension for five yellow card against Southampton on Sunday. Additionally, Shkodran Mustafi apparently hopped off Huddersfield match with Hamstring problems – although Unai Emery assured he won’t be out for long, we need to protect who we can considering the history of injury problems Arsenal have had over the years.

Other options which we do have are Nacho Monreal and Stephan Lichtensteiner, who are naturally full backs but could feature in the middle, if needed.

Laurent Koscielny suffered an Achilles injury against Atletico Madrid during the UEFA Europa League semi-final second leg match

But right now, The Captain – Laurent Koscielny, is the centre of the talks. The players are excited to have him back, I am excited to have him back and like me all the Gooners are excited to have Laurent Koscielny donning the Arsenal colors once again. But where my concerns lies is ‘Why are we wasting him against Quarabag?’.

If we are looking to give him a run against Quarabag for about 20-25 minutes, them I’m well on board. But we need him against Southampton and that is something Unai Emery needs to understand.

Plus – Koscielny is already getting his feet on the ground, he has featured couple of times for Under-23’s and the fixture against Quarabag is well going to be U23 apart from Petr Cech and Mohamed Elneny. Now, the match is at Emirates, so that is important that the captain is back with a warm welcome but the match is Southampton is more important, in the end eyes should be in Premier League and we have already secured the first place in the group stages of Europa League.

And Laurent Koscielny is going to play a big role in the second half of the season, we got to protect him and he is going to patch up Arsenal’s defence in ways we can only think of, I think every Arsenal fan who has seen Laurent Koscielny play would agree with me on this.

Arsenal manager Unai Emery confirmed involvement of Koscielny against Quarabag:

“We are going to use tomorrow (Thursday) some players from the Under-23 team. Also tomorrow our plan is to start with Laurent Koscielny,” said Emery.

“Our first aim in this competition we have done, which is to be first in the group. But we respect this competition and Qarabag. Tomorrow our objective is to win.

“We are going to give players chances tomorrow to take responsibility, rhythm, confidence. Also, we are going to play a lot of matches in the next 10 days. We have four matches and every match is very important.”

Well from what I’ve watched of Unai Emery until now is that he is savvy and smart, so yaa, I trust his instincts. But I still think, ‘Shouldn’t he be saved for Southampton’.