Should Pablo Fornals not be available this afternoon – and careful David Moyes seems to have been hinting in that direction – I would expect Said Benrahma to get the call as his replacement.
Despite Manu Lanzini having a very bright game when he arrived at Manchester United as a second half sub, the £25 million signing must surely soon see some real faith placed in him.
You don’t spend that sort of dough without given a player a real chance and that time may be upon us today.
Having seen his position made permanent at the club he can surely only suffer a confidence loss should the be ignored in favour of Lanzini today if that’s what it comes down to.
I choose between the two because there can surely be no place for Mark Noble in today’s team – that’s not on.
For me, Benrahma needs a goal – nothing more or less – and were he to manage it today against Arsenal, what a boost that could give him.
Moyes has made public comments about his goal scoring ability and what’s expectedbut all that will be forgotten should he get the chance today and although we have a couple of hours to wait this is the team I expect to start even should Fornals not pass a late test.
Fab, Coufal, Diop, Dawson, Cresswell; Rice, Soucek; Bowen, Lingard, Benrahma, Antonio.
He needs to play..I hope to hod he doesn’t put a negative team out again..it will do us no good we need to win today to stay in contention for c.l
I hope he starts today. He looks a real exciting player who’s maybe trying a bit too hard when he gets on the pitch. He just needs a goal to settle him down. The expectations of his deal being made permanent and his goal-scoring record from Brentford were high but I really hope he’s given more time to settle in and more time on the pitch to fulfill the obvious promise that is there.
I also feel that our recent high position has raised the expectations of all fans and that some will be vocal about our ‘failure’ to secure European football if that happens. I hope this doesn’t happen. Wherever we end up, we should applaud our players and management team for a great season – the real work will be to maintain that in 2021/22 but I think we’ll be up for it. A win for us today hopefully. COYI.
Benrhama is lucky that Arthur Masuaku is unavailable. Arsenal outplayed Spurs and SB is a defensive liability. He has improved, but a long way from AM or even Ben Johnson.
Defence wins trophies.
I’d say Masuaku is without doubt our teams defensive liability. Every time he’s on the ball in the defensive third I have a little panic!