Unai Emery has confirmed Laurent Koscielny will make his comeback against Qarabag and Mesut Özil is also set to feature in the Europa League dead rubber. The 33-year-old Koscielny, the Arsenal captain, has yet to play under Emery having ruptured an achilles in the Europa League semi-final defeat to Atlético Madrid in May.
The defender missed France’s World Cup success as he recovered his fitness and featured for 85 minutes in an EFL Trophy match with Portsmouth last week.
Arsenal have a defensive crisis on their hands as they approach Sunday’s trip to Southampton, with Rob Holding out for the season, Konstantinos Mavropanos still out with a groin injury, Shkodran Mustafi struggling with a hamstring problem and Sokratis Papastathopoulos suspended. That could mean Koscielny will be asked to play twice in four days.
“Our first aim in this competition, we have done, which was to be first in the group,” Emery said when asked about his team selection, with progression as group winners already assured. “But we respect this competition and we respect Qarabag and tomorrow our objective is to win and we are going to give players chances tomorrow to take responsibility, take rhythm and take confidence.
“Also, because we are going to play a lot of matches, in the next 10 days we play four matches – each of them very important … it is in our planning to start with Laurent Koscielny. We are going to look also if he can play 90 minutes or less minutes in this game.
“We can use another player in this position, someone like Nacho Monreal, who is also with us and in his career he played in this position. We are going to decide but the first is to think about the match tomorrow because we need to receive information on how he can feel tomorrow.”
Özil has missed the last five games in all competitions having initially dropped out of the side at Bournemouth before being ruled out with a back injury. He could also be in line to play against Qarabag, having lost his place in Emery’s Premier League side. “I don’t know,” Emery replied when asked if Özil would feature. “He is in the group, there are 18 players in the squad for this match and I am going to decide if he plays tomorrow from the beginning or during the match in the 90 minutes.”