Arsenal make one change to the XI sent out for Saturday lunchtime’s nondescript 1-0 defeat at Newcastle. Declan Rice has picked up an injury, and hasn’t travelled with the squad in the hope of making the weekend fixture against Chelsea. Ben White comes into the side. As expected, Martin Ødegaard returns after his long injury lay-off to take up a place on the bench.
The hosts Inter by contrast are well rested. Simone Inzaghi brings back five players stood down for their 1-0 victory over Venezia on Sunday. Hakan Çalhanoğlu, Davide Frattesi, Mehdi Taremi, Matteo Darmian and Yann Bisseck return to the starting line-up, with Nicolò Barella, Marcus Thuram, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Alessandro Bastoni and Federico Dimarco stepping down to the bench.
Inter and Arsenal have faced each other on two previous occasions. The away team has won comfortably both times, Thierry Henry missing a penalty at Highbury as the Italians won 3-0 in September 2003, then scoring twice in a 5-1 rout of the Nerazzurri at San Siro a couple of months later. So in that sense history favours Mikel Arteta’s side tonight. But more recent history does not: Inter have won seven of their last eight matches in all competitions, and have only tasted defeat this season in the Milan derby back in September, while the Gunners have only taken one Premier League point from the latest nine available, and looked distinctly uncertain when hosting Shakhtar in their last Champions League fixture. So in that sense history doesn’t augur so well … but Martin Ødegaard could return from injury, which would give out-of-sorts Arsenal a huge boost ahead of this tricky but tantalising tie against the Italian champions. Kick-off at San Siro is 8pm GMT. It’s on!