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Arsenal face Valencia in the first leg of their Europa League semi-final on Thursday evening.
The Gunners currently lie fifth in the Premier League, meaning they may have to win the competition to have any chance of playing in next season’s Champions League.
They have been in simply abysmal form of late, however, losing three games on the bounce, to Crystal Palace, Wolves and Leicester City, while conceding three goals in each outing.
Unai Emery, though, will be boosted by the returns of both Mesut Ozil and Nacho Monreal, per the Daily Express, after they each returned to training.
Both, then, are likely to start as the Gunners look to take a first-leg advantage to Spain.
Football FanCast takes a look at how the club could line up…
Four players who started the thumping by Leicester could drop out of the XI: Bernd Leno, Shkodran Mustafi, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Alex Iwobi.
Petr Cech is likely to replace Leno in goal; he has played in every single Europa League knockout game thus far this term.
With Monreal back to full fitness, he could slot into a back three, leading to the omission of the error-prone Mustafi, while it would be wise for Laurent Koscielny to play too, such is his experience of such occasions.
Ozil could return to the side and that would see Mkhitaryan dropped. The two often struggle to coexist, while Iwobi is unlikely to fit into a system that employs wing-backs.
Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang will surely be trusted to provide the goals that the Gunners desperately require as they look to reach the Europa League final.






