5 Arsenal youth players join first-team training pre-Palace clash | OneFootball

Five Arsenal youth players joined first-team training ahead of Tuesday’s League Cup quarter-final, with all of them options at the back.

Photo by Julian Finney/Getty Images

If any Arsenal youth players hope to make a League Cup appearance against Crystal Palace on Tuesday night, it looks like it’s going to be a defensive player.

During Monday’s first-team training session, an entire replacement back four and goalkeeper joined in with the senior players, with Jack Porter, Marli Salmon, Josh Nichols, Will Sweet, and Josh Ogunnaike all involved.

Arsenal fans should be aware of goalkeeper Porter, centre-back Salmon, and right-back Nichols, as all of them have previously made senior appearances under Mikel Arteta. As for the other two, Sweet is another centre-back, whilst Ogunnaike is a left-back.

Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images

Arsenal’s primary fitness concerns remain in defensive areas, with Cristhian Mosquera and Ben White certainly out until January and Gabriel Magalhaes also a doubt to feature in any games this month.

Jurrien Timber is available at right-back, but there are no natural senior alternatives in his position right now. The Palace game could be the best opportunity Arteta has to rest the Dutch defender and bring in a youth player.

Then Riccardo Calafiori went down with a knock during the win over Everton, and Arteta won’t want to take risks with the Italian international given his injury history. Myles Lewis-Skelly is available to step in for Calafiori, but Ogunnaike is another alternative.

Photo via Arsenal.com

It remains unlikely that any of the above five youth players will start on Tuesday night. Though it’s a League Cup match, it’s also a quarter-final, and Arteta has shown in the past that he’s willing to take the competition seriously even if it means putting his players at risk of injuries.

For evidence of that you just have to look at last season’s match vs Newcastle United that left Gabriel Martinelli with a hamstring injury, and was also the last match Kai Havertz played before his hamstring tear in training.

Before Newcastle, Havertz had started seven of Arsenal’s previous eight games in the space of four weeks (coming off the bench in the eighth) and had played the full 90 against Manchester City three days earlier.

Arsenal were already 2-0 down from the first leg, and throwing the second leg by letting Martinelli and Havertz rest could have really helped the Gunners with the remainder of their campaign. But they both started anyway.

Tuesday night will tell us if Arsenal have learned any lessons from those setbacks.