“Regarding Martin, we still have to wait and see the news,” Arteta said. “He certainly wasn't available to play today.”
Next up is this European clash with Atalanta in the UEFA Champions League which has of course been revamped. Rather strangely, Arsenal are playing this game on a Thursday which has created a nightmare scenario where City play Inter Milan in Manchester on Wednesday night whereas the Gunners travel to Italy a day later and then need to get back and recover before going up to the northwest for the Sunday title battle.
Yet while many would argue therefore that heavy changes need to be made ahead of the weekend’s action, there are incentives for Arteta to ensure he wins the midweek fixture. Atalanta are no pushovers having been crowned Europa League champions, beating Bayer Leverkusen in the final.
A 3-2 win over fellow European competitors Fiorentina, who embark on another run at the UEFA Europa Conference League next month, got them back on track at the weekend after a 4-0 mauling from Inter. Arsenal will be looking however to strike now and pick up maximum points.
The days of group stages are long gone and now points certainly do mean prizes. The higher up the new league system you finish, the better chance teams have of avoiding two extra games in February as sides who finish in the top eight will be straight through to the last-16.
Meanwhile, teams finishing from ninth through to 24th will play a home and away play-off match with the winning eight sides making up the first stage of the official knockout phase of the competition. Yet there is even more incentive for Arsenal too.
The more games Arsenal win, the better their European coefficient becomes and having spent some time outside of the Champions League and failing to progress as far as expected in the Europa League, their coefficient has suffered. Arsenal are currently 19th in the rankings on 62 points.
They’re five behind 18th-place Barcelona and seven behind 16th-placed West Ham. Despite missing Champions League football last season, Liverpool remain fourth 34 points above Arsenal – improvements to the coefficient will help the Gunners be in pot 1 in future years, as opposed to pot 2 like this year.
Finishing in the top eight also means a new seeding format will benefit Arsenal. In the round of 16, seeded teams will play the second leg at home and will play an unseeded side who made their way to the last-16 phase through the play-off round.
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