Changes and a midfield question for Wigan FA Cup clash

Morning.

We’re in FA Cup 4th round action today, taking on Wigan at home. It’s the kind of opposition that will allow Mikel Arteta to rotate his side, and I think at the back we’ll see starts for the likes of Ben White, Cristhian Mosquera (again), and Myles Lewis-Skelly ,while one of Riccardo Calafiori or Piero Hincapie will fill in at centre-half to take some of the burden off Gabriel.

In midfield Christian Norgaard will come in, I think Eberechi Eze has to play again, but after that the manager has some thinking to do. Without the injured Kai Havertz and Mikel Merino, options are limited, especially as Martin Odegaard is a doubt. He spoke about his issue in the programme notes, saying:

I picked up a bit of an injury when they [Brentford] scored their goal, but hopefully it’s not too bad. We’ll see how it goes in the build-up to today’s game and over the next few days. I tried to clear the ball as it came down, but instead kicked into the player a bit, and ended up over-stretching my leg, which pinched the knee. I was able to carry on, but on Friday morning it was very sore, so I was worried of course, but thankfully it looks like it’s not too bad.

Hopefully it’s not serious, but I’d still be surprised to see him today, which probably means one of Declan Rice or Martin Zubimendi will be needed to make up the numbers in that part of the pitch. Not ideal, given the current schedule and the amount of minutes they’ve both played, but what else is there? We saw a couple of young midfielders included in the squad for the Kairat game, but I can’t really see the manager doing that today (not that I would have a strong objection if he did though).

Up front, choose your trio from the players available. Bukayo Saka looked a long way from fully fit when he came on against Brentford – does he need more time to rest, or some minutes under his belt to get back up to speed? Gabriel Jesus and Gabriel Martinelli will be itching to start, and if you can bring on Viktor Gyokeres later to have a go at a tired Wigan defence, then that seems like a decent idea all in all. There was also a sight of Max Dowman in the latest training pictures, but we’ll have to wait and see how ready he is to play after being out for months with an ankle problem.

I can’t say I know a lot about Wigan other than they’re 22nd in League One and just sacked their manager last week. They’ve won just once in 2026, and it’d be a major upset if they found a way to do that today. Mikel Arteta says:

It’s an opportunity for the team, again, with another competition, and the history that we have related to that competition, it’s amazing. We’ll play at home again. I’m really excited to recover and go again. Every three days we are getting so used to playing different competitions, home or away, and we know what that competition means to the club, to ourselves, and go step by step.

Not much more to it than that. Ideally this is as routine as it gets, but cup football can be weird. Hopefully though, we can come through this successfully, and without any other injury or fitness issues ahead of what is a crucial week in Premier League terms.

As always, you can follow on the action on the live blog, and we’ll have all the post-game stuff on Arseblog News. Catch you later!

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