Arsenal team news: Milner and Welbeck to be rotated, Ayari could return

Main Club Sponsor

TICKETS

SHOP

League leaders head to the Amex tomorrow.

2026-03-03T12:15+00:00

James Milner has started our last two Premier League matches. 📸 by Paul Hazlewood.

Fabian Hurzeler has said he will be making change to his starting XI for our Premier League match against leaders Arsenal on Wednesday, kick-off 7.30pm.

Team news

The head coach provided an update on Yasin Ayari in his press conference on Tuesday, while also conceding he will likely change the team from Sunday's win over Nottingham Forest.

"Yasin Ayari trained yesterday [Monday], so hopefully he reacts fine to the training session and then we have another session today. I'm quite confident that he will be an option for tomorrow [Wednesday].

"There are some small issues, so we have to test the players today. We have to see who's a hundred percent fit for tomorrow. But there’s no new big injury concerns.

"I think Danny Welbeck might be an option to rotate, yes. Also James Milner who has had two really good performances. He invested a lot and in this position we might make a change, to give him more time to recover.

"But he proved again what he's capable of doing at his age. That's very important for me, for us and also for him. There’s now a big competition for who gets into the starting XI. We have big availability and therefore I'm very pleased with how everything's going."

Mikel Merino is due to miss the game at the Amex for the Gunners, while Ben White, Declan Rice, Martin Odegaard and David Raya will reportedly be assessed.

Their last line-up

🔴 𝗧𝗘𝗔𝗠𝙉𝙀𝙒𝙎 ⚪️

Unchanged from last week's north London derby win.

Let's set the tone, Gunners ✊

🤝 Presented by @deel
— Arsenal (@Arsenal) March 1, 2026

The Gunners claimed a 2-1 win over London rivals Chelsea on Sunday. Their line-up included two former Albion players in Leandro Trossard and Viktor Gyokeres.

Match stats

Albion have won two of their last 11 Premier League matches against Arsenal (D3 L6), with both wins coming at the Emirates in April 2022 (2-1) and May 2023 (3-0).

Arsenal lost two of their first three Premier League trips to the Amex against Brighton (D1), but haven’t lost any of their last five visits since 2020-21 (W3 D2).

Only two of the last nine Premier League meetings between Brighton and Arsenal have been won by the home side (3 draws, 4 away wins), though Arsenal won 2-1 earlier this season. The last time both league fixtures between the two were won by the home team was in 2017-18.

Brighton have won two of their last four Premier League home games against the team starting the day top of the table (D1 L1), both by a 3-2 scoreline. However, both of these victories came after their opponents had already won the Premier League title (Man City in May 2021, Liverpool in May 2025).

Arsenal are unbeaten in their last 19 evening (7pm or later) Premier League matches (W14 D5) since a 2-0 home loss to West Ham in December 2023. However, all three of those games so far in 2026 have finished level (0-0 v Liverpool, 1-1 v Brentford, 2-2 v Wolves).

Brighton have won both of their last two Premier League games, after having only won one of their previous 13 beforehand (D6 L6). The Seagulls last won three successive league fixtures in May 2025.

Between August and December in the Premier League this season, Arsenal scored just 11 goals in nine away games, an average of 1.2 per game. Since the turn of the year they’ve netted 14 goals in six on the road, an average of 2.3 per game.

Of the 20 occasions that Arsenal have gone 1-0 up in the Premier League this season, their opener came from either a set-piece or a penalty in 13 of them. This is the joint-most set-piece/penalty opening goals by any side in a single Premier League campaign.

Brighton’s Danny Welbeck has scored 10 Premier League goals this season, matching his best ever tally previously set in 2024-25. One more goal would make him only the third player to score more than 10 goals in a Premier League season for the very first time while aged 35 or older when doing so, after Gary McAllister in 1990-00 (35) and Zlatan Ibrahimovic in 2016-17 (35).

Viktor Gyokeres has been involved in six goals in his last seven away games for Arsenal in all competitions (5 goals, 1 assist), having scored just twice (no assists) in his first 12 on the road for the Gunners.

Match officials