Arsenal and Manchester City were back in pre-season action on Wednesday.
Below, we round up the key Fantasy Premier League (FPL) talking points from these matches.
ARSENAL 1-3 REAL BETIS
- Goal: Hincapie
- Assist: Tzolis
Arsenal XI: Arrizabalaga (Meslier 62), White (Copley 46, Julienne 56), Mosquera (Salmon 46), Hincapie (Gabriel 46, Clarke 76), Calafiori (Ogunnaike 62), Lewis-Skelly (Ibrahim 62), Havertz (Vieira 46), Nwaneri (O’Neill 76), Dowman (Nelson 46), Tzolis (Martinelli 46, Kabia 76), Gyokeres (Jesus 46)
Premier League champions Arsenal were sent home “fuming” from Dublin’s Aviva Stadium on Wednesday after an unusually lax defensive display led to a 3-1 defeat by Real Betis.
Despite naming the same starting XI that beat Girona 4-1 last week, Mikel Arteta watched his typically well-drilled troops make a series of uncharacteristic mistakes to concede thrice in the first half.
Kepa Arrizabalaga (£5.0m) was at fault for the first two, misjudging a ninth-minute corner – which his teammates also then failed to clear – before his poor clearance a quarter of an hour later led to Betis doubling their lead from distance. The Spanish side’s third – minutes before half-time – came courtesy of Kai Havertz (£7.5m) giving away possession near the edge of his own box.
Havertz lined up in midfield again here with Viktor Gyokeres (£7.5m) leading the line, and the Germany international played through his Swedish teammate for a great close-range chance that was saved by Betis goalie Alvaro Valles’s boot in the opening minutes.
The Gunners did manage a goal of their own in the first half as Piero Hincapie (£5.5m) nodded home a corner delivery from in-form new winger Christos Tzolis (£6.5m) to temporarily make it 2-1, but that would prove to be a mere consolation effort in the end.
A second half characterised by a raft of substitutions brought little else in terms of goalmouth action, with more eyes on the half-time introductions and subsequent 76th-minute withdrawals of Brazilian duo Gabriel Magalhaes (£8.0m) and Gabriel Martinelli (£6.5m).
Making their respective pre-season bows after a post-World Cup break, the pair are not thought to be injured; rather, Arteta looks to be carefully managing the workload of his international players, having offered similar half-hour outings to Hincapie, Gyokeres and Havertz last time out.
It meant 25 players got a run-out for Arsenal all in all, with the other extra change coming when teenager Louie Copley had to be replaced due to an apparent knee injury soon after he took stand-in captain Ben White’s (£5.5m) spot at right-back.
“Yeah, that’s a lot of players and obviously you don’t have that momentum and that rhythm, but we indeed have players coming in at different stages. We cannot risk the play; we need to be really smart about how we’re going to progress them and the entire defeat is a good thing in pre-season to create even more fire in the belly.” – Mikel Arteta
A lot of players and more still to return, with Martin Odegaard (£6.5m) due back next, having resumed individual training following his World Cup campaign with Norway. He could therefore be involved when Arsenal face Borussia Dortmund in the Emirates Cup on Sunday, or otherwise appear in next Wednesday’s home clash with Como in preparation for the Community Shield on 16th August.
Sometime after Odegaard’s imminent return, Arteta’s options will be further bolstered when England’s Declan Rice (£7.5m), Eberechi Eze (£6.5m), Bukayo Saka (£9.5m) and Noni Madueke (£6.5m) are back with their club squad in north London, as with World Cup winners David Raya (£6.0m), Martin Zubimendi (£5.5m) and Mikel Merino (£6.0m) of Spain.
“It’s been 10 days away from home, so we’re looking forward to coming back, seeing some players as well. Martin will be back and then the English and Spanish internationals will be back soon as well. So, we’re going to start to have more and more players at the moment, we still miss a lot of them.” – Mikel Arteta
Miss them indeed, and there remained two other senior absentees in the form of injured pair William Saliba (£6.0m) and Jurrien Timber (£6.5m). Saliba’s back injury sustained in the latter stages of the World Cup is expected to sideline the Frenchman for the start of the season, while Timber faces a race against time to recover from a persistent groin problem.
In the meantime, though, there were more promising performances from Max Dowman (£5.5m) and Tzolis, who had a pre-season goal and assist apiece coming into this match and combined well to force the corner taken by the Greek international that led to Hincapie’s goal.
Myles Lewis-Skelly (£5.5m) again played as a sole holding midfielder with Arteta light on central options, while Ethan Nwaneri (£5.5m) did little to persuade the gaffer to look his way when the locker room fills back up.
K-LEAGUE XI 1-3 MAN CITY
- Goals: Ait-Nouri, Reijnders, Mubama
- Assist: Semenyo x2
Manchester City XI: Donnarumma (Bettinelli 46), Khusanov (Reis 46), Dias (Alleyne 46), Gvardiol (Mfuni 46), Ait-Nouri (Monga 60), Lewis (Nunes 60), Kovacic (Nico 46), Reijnders (Heskey 60), Semenyo (Savinho 46), Foden (Echeverri 60), Mubama (Marmoush 60)
Manchester City, meanwhile, battled through sweltering Seoul heat to triumph 3-1 over a K-League XI, marking Enzo Maresca’s first win at the helm.
Divin Mubama scored for the second match in a row after last weekend’s draw with Inter Milan, the 21-year-old centre-forward starting up front with Erling Haaland (£15.5m) on his post-World Cup break and Omar Marmoush (£7.0m) restricted to a substitute appearance on the hour mark.
Mubama was the intended target of a cut-back from Tijjani Reijnders (£6.0m) that deflected to Rayan Ait-Nouri (£5.5m) for the opener, and he found the back of the net himself to make City’s advantage a comfortable one when pouncing on a rebound from Antoine Semenyo’s (£8.5m) saved shot.
Minutes earlier, a cheeky backheeled pass earned Semenyo an assist when Reijnders finished sharply on the turn to restore City’s lead after an outside-the-box finish from Kim Dae Won – who was given too much space by Maresca’s defensive troops on the edge of the area – had levelled the scores for a spell.
By the second half, the game had largely petered out, though Marmoush and fellow substitutes Savinho (£6.5m) and Jeremy Monga (£5.0m) did test the opposing goalkeeper late on. Monga, making his debut after joining from Leicester City, also saw a goal ruled out for a handball offence.
Of note from an FPL perspective was Ait-Nouri’s deployment as a left winger, forming the three-strong support crew for Mubama in Maresca’s 4-2-3-1 alongside No 10 Phil Foden (£7.0m) – who had some promising moments but blazed one decent chance over the bar – and Semenyo.
That left Josko Gvardiol (£5.5m) at left-back, completing a backline that also included Rico Lewis (£4.5m) plus central defensive pairing Abdukodir Khusanov (£5.5m) and skipper Ruben Dias (£5.5m), with Mateo Kovacic (£5.5m) and the box-crashing Reijnders in the double pivot.
- There remains a large group of senior squad members who are due to join up with the squad back in Manchester next week ahead of the Community Shield, namely those who reached the latter stages of this summer’s World Cup.
“Eight or nine players are still not here with us. But the important thing is when they are here they make the effort to do the things we have been trying to do since day one. Also we need them to trust what we want, that is important and then when the rest of the players arrive there is no doubt we will be even better.” – Enzo Maresca
Haaland is in that group, of course, alongside the newly signed Elliot Anderson (£6.5m) plus existing squad members including Rayan Cherki (£7.5m), Marc Guehi (£6.0m) and Nico O’Reilly (£6.5m).
Rodri (£6.5m) is also sidelined after undergoing back surgery, and we are yet to see Jeremy Doku (£7.5m) in pre-season, while Matheus Nunes (£6.0m) got his first minutes as a replacement for Lewis.
City continue their limited pre-season activity against Atletico Madrid this Sunday (9th August), before facing Arsenal in the Community Shield the following week; seven days after that, it’s Bournemouth in Gameweek 1.
- It will therefore be intriguing to see Maresca’s chosen line-up against the Gunners in particular, when the majority of the first-team squad bar Rodri could be in contention.
