Arsenal XI vs MLS All-Stars: Rice debut, confirmed team news, predicted lineup and injury latest tonight
The Gunners begin their pre-season tour of the United States with the traditional summer friendly in Washington DC, and there is plenty of intrigue over their starting line-up.
Mikel Arteta has assured fans that £105million capture Rice is not suffering from an injury despite being pictured working away from the group in training earlier this week.
“We just wanted to manage him,” Arsenal boss Arteta said of the England international.
“Obviously a lot has happened to him in the last five or six days. He had a very hectic schedule and he had a few training sessions that went really good, but prior to that, he didn’t do much before he joined us.
“So we wanted to just manage him. He trained today with us. He was in good form and he’s fine.”
Along with potential places for Rice and Timber, Arteta could hand Kai Havertz a first start having brought him off the bench for the draw with Nurnberg last week.
Arsenal named a strong XI for the game in Germany yet let an early lead slip after a number of errors from their young substitutes.
It would not be a surprise to see Arteta start strong against the All-Stars and he will have been monitoring the fitness of Oleksandr Zinchenko ahead of the game.
The left-back is back in training along with Takehiro Tomiyasu, Gabriel Martinelli and Mohamed Elneny but none were deemed ready to face Nurnberg.
Leandro Trossard and Martin Odegaard both finished that game with knocks while Reiss Nelson has sat out the trip having seemingly picked up an injury.
Thomas Partey and Emile Smith Rowe will join the tour next week, ruling them out of this friendly, while Nicolas Pepe, Cedric Soares and Albert Sambi Lokonga have all been left at home.
Predicted Arsenal XI: Ramsdale; Timber, Saliba, Gabriel, Tierney; Odegaard, Rice, Havertz; Saka, Jesus, Martinelli.
