Mikel Arteta made three notable alterations to his starting XI for Wednesday night\u2019s Premier League clash with Brentford, moving Bukayo Saka, Eberechi Eze and Jurri\u00ebn Timber to the bench.<\/p>\n
Arteta resisted wholesale rotation but chose to reshuffle after the weekend\u2019s 1\u20131 draw against Chelsea. Noni Madueke, club captain Martin \u00d8degaard\u2014in for his first start since returning from a knee injury last month\u2014and Ben White were drafted into the lineup to provide fresh options as Arsenal navigate a crowded fixture list.<\/p>\n
Mikel Merino remains in the unexpected stand-in striker role he has taken to recently, having scored the equaliser at Chelsea. That flexibility has helped Arsenal cope with personnel demands while their attacking resources have been bolstered ahead of a run of seven games in the remaining four weeks of 2025: Aston Villa, Club Brugge, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Everton, Crystal Palace, Brighton & Hove Albion and Aston Villa (again).<\/p>\n
Viktor Gy\u00f6keres was named among the substitutes after making his first appearance following a four-game absence, coming off the bench against Chelsea. The Swede has scored four times in the Premier League since his summer move from Sporting CP and previously netted 54 times across all competitions for Sporting in the prior season.<\/p>\n
Gabriel Jesus was also on the bench for the second game running after a long spell out with an ACL injury suffered in January 2025 that kept him sidelined for 11 months. He has played an unofficial behind-closed-doors match in recent weeks and remains one to watch for a return to competitive action.<\/p>\n
Arsenal head into Brentford aiming to extend a run that stands at 17 matches unbeaten across all competitions. They have not lost since a 1\u20130 defeat to Liverpool in August, which remains their only loss this season. Arteta\u2019s selective rotation underlines a balance between maintaining momentum and managing player fitness during a congested period.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arteta rested Saka, Eze and Timber for Brentford as Arsenal manage a congested schedule. With depth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4869,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,728,172],"tags":[1073,984,826],"class_list":["post-4870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-brentford","category-epl","tag-acl-injury","tag-ben-white","tag-bukayo-saka"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}