How League cup may help Arsenal beat Everton

Some Arsenal fans might be expecting Arsene Wenger to rest one or two key players today, with the recent injury picked up by Aaron Ramsey bringing to our minds the risk of this with most of the Arsenal first team having played almost every Premier League and Champions League game as well as the international games for their various countries.

Unless they are actually carrying a knock though, I think that the Arsenal manager will start all of his big players against Everton today, despite the fact that we have the next Capital One cup game coming up on Tuesday. As we know, this competition is a very low priority for the Frenchman, at least until we get into the final rounds, and is used to give the fringe players and youngsters some game time.

Whether the same will be true of the Toffess, however, is more of a doubt. Roberto Martinez may well see the League cup as a very real chance of a trophy and it gets you a place in Europe these days as well. Everton also play on Tuesday and they have been handed a tough tie against Premier League Norwich City.

Their last round was against a Championship side, Reading, but Martinez fielded a strong side including the likes of Barkley, Lukaku, Kone, Deulofeu, Stones and Jagielka so I assume he is planning to take the cup seriously. I wonder if this means that he might just rest a few first team players for the game against Arsenal today.