Sunday 1 April, 13:30
Emirates Stadium
Premier League
Should we rest our best players for this? Considering we have CSKA a couple of days later… 
Result?
0 voters
My first ever game I’m going to 
Looking forward to seeing Özil playing live 
hopefully he plays haha
Arsenal 5 Stoke 0
The EFL have really tightened their rules on this kind of thing, so teams can’t field a weakened team towards the end of the season. But for some reason, the PL don’t have such stipulations.
Stoke are in a relegation battle. If we rest our best players, we’ll annoy a load of other teams – not to mention potentially give fucking Stoke some much needed points.
I’d be happy to just rest a few for this one. It’d still be good to go into the first leg on the back of a win/on a high after helping to relegate Stoke 
Because it’s none of their business how managers competing in several competitions choose to manage their squads and its none of their business which competitions managers choose to prioritise.
It would also be nigh on possible to police. A manager can simply say a player is “a little jaded” or not “at a hundred percent”, how can some suit sat in the Premier League HQ tell them differently with any sense of authority?
What if a manager is accused of weakening their side by not playing, for example, Ramsey and instead playing Elneny. Many might view that as a weaker side but the manager could easily justify it as being a tactical decision, playing a different sort of player to address a strength of the opposition. You could choose to play Iwobi over Mkhitaryan because Iwobi might be better suited against a certain fullback or team, others would argue that that’s weakening the side. I’m using Arsenal examples but you could literally pick out hundreds of examples from other sides too.
And if the Premier League get to make rules about having to play your strongest team then why can’t the bodies in charge of the League Cup, FA Cup, Champions League and Europa League rightfully do the same? Then you can end up in a situation in which managers are told that they have to play their strongest side in all 55 games or whatever game a season.
It’s just my opinion but such rules would not be appropriate, and even leaving aside whether the rules would be good or bad, they’d be totally unenforceable and completely down to interpretation. There’s no way such rules could be applied fairly across the board.
Destroy and relegate these cunts. Auba and Mkhi to continue their great form.
In the EFL it’s done by the number of players e.g. in your 18 man squad, 10 of the outfield players have to have been in the previous squad. So yeah, pretty easy to police to be honest.
The PL used to have stricter guidelines but they loosened them a few years back. The only time a team will get in trouble now is if they field a team of youngsters.
It might not be important to you. But a team doing just that could be the difference between another team playing PL or Championship football. Look, i’m not going to lose any sleep over it, but I can understand why managers/players will get pissed off about it.
But in the EFL managers don’t have the same amount of competitions to juggle, so you aren’t comparing like for like in the slightest. So no, not all that easy to police if your best suggestion is a set of rules that don’t suit the competition we are talking about.
A mid table team resting their first team for a cup semi final or semi final could mean the difference between a team like us getting Champions League football or not, something which can also have huge implications just like the difference between playing in the PL or the league below (no parachute payments for ending up in the Europa League). IMO that’s just the way it works, teams need to have personal responsibility for the predicaments they find themselves in after a 38 game season.
And I’ll repeat my point, if the Premier League can institute such rules then why can’t other competitions?
My best suggestion? It’s not my suggestion at all. I didn’t come up with it. I just listed what they do.
I honestly couldn’t give a fuck, it was just a musing as to why the PL doesn’t have a stricter guideline – not necessarily as strict as the EFL ones – and an understanding as to why managers get annoyed.
I asked how it would be policed and you brought up EFL guidelines in response and immediately followed up by saying that it would be easy to police. So yeah, that was literally your suggestion as to how it would be policed.
Yeah, that’s an example it being easily policed – that there are ways in which to keep track. I didn’t necessarily mean that method is exactly what we should do. 10 outfield players out of 16 is way too harsh for the PL teams – as you said, we have more things to balance. But there are always ways to implement things without it being based purely on someone’s judgement.
Fair play. Apologies for being a bit confrontational, it’s an ingrained part of my character that I try to mitigate but often fail lol 
Not fussed at all about what happens in our last 8 league games, it’s all about the Europa League and has been for some time.
Only thing I care about is seeing Nelson start at least one game in his actual position just to see where he is.
Still thrashing Stoke would be nice though, as the cunts hate us without no reason.
Wenger only plays Nelson out of position 
For me it’s the EL or nothing right now.
Smash stoke and bring them a step closer to the championship
Years and years ago, and then some, I remember standing in a soaking heavy drizzle on a miserable March Saturday on the North Bank watching a Stoke game. We always used to finish about twelfth in the league back then, and them a few places lower.
In honour of that, let’s pound this shite and send them where they rightly belong.
I’d give Laca some minutes to regain fitness ahead of the Europa League.
Man this place is dead lol. Tbh so is football twitter, international friendlies really are such a cold shower just as the season is reaching its climax.