Arsenal and Valencia are looking to forget their domestic league troubles when the two teams meet at the Emirates Stadium on Thursday in the first leg of their UEFA Europa League tie. These two sides have last met during the 2002-2003 season in the UEFA Champions League second group stage, the match in London ended goalless while the reverse fixture was won by Valencia 2-1. These two teams have also clashed in the 1980 UEFA Cup Winners' Cup final in Brussels, the match ended goalless and Valencia eventually won the trophy on penalties. Overall, Arsenal have won just one of the five direct matches, while Valencia have grabbed two wins.
Arsenal have done well to get this far in the UEFA Europa League this season, but they really didn't get to face top-class opponents before the quarter-finals. In the first two knockout rounds they got past BATE Borisov and Rennes and then in the last eight they pulled off an impressive 3-0 aggregate win over Serie A side Napoli. However, after the 1-0 victory in Naples the Gunners suffered three consecutive defeats in the Premier League and dropped to fifth place in the league table. They conceded three goals in each of those three defeats, and that is a very big reason to be worried for manager Unai Emery ahead of the match against Valencia. Mesut Ozil and Nacho Monreal missed last weekend's 3-0 defeat at Leicester and both are injury doubts for Thursday's game, while Aaron Ramsey, Danny Welbeck, Hector Bellerin and Rob Holding are out for the rest of the season.
Valencia had an impressive run in the UEFA Europa League this season, they are still undefeated in the competition after six matches and in the quarter-finals they knocked out fellow Spanish side Villarreal with an emphatic 5-1 aggregate victory. They have their own troubles on the domestic front, though, they lost their last two LaLiga matches and dropped to sixth place in the league table. Former Arsenal midfielder Francis Coquelin will miss the chance to face his former club because he is suspended for this match, while Denis Cheryshev and Geoffrey Kondogbia are injured.
Probable line-ups:
Arsenal: Cech - Sokratis, Koscielny, Monreal - Maitland-Niles, Xhaka, Torreira, Kolasinac - Iwobi, Mkhitaryan - Lacazette
Valencia: Neto - Wass, Garay, Paulista, Gaya - Torres, Soler, Parejo, Guedes - Moreno, Mina
My prediction: 1-1 draw, both sides will be looking to preserve as many chances as they can for the second leg.
Here are the odds for the match at Bet365:
Arsenal win - 2.00
Draw - 3.60
Valencia win - 4.00
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