Koscielny to return against Qarabag

Laurent Koscielny will make his return to the Arsenal first-team in Thursday’s Europa League match against Qarabag, manager Unai Emery has confirmed.

The France international was ruled out for the remainder of the year when he ruptured his Achilles tendon in Arsenal’s Europa League semi-final against Atletico Madrid at the start of May.

He has played a couple of times for the Under-23s and is now ready to make his first-team return with Emery set to include the defender in his side for Thursday’s Group E game at the Emirates Stadium.

“Our first mind in this competition is to be first in the group – which we have done – but we respect this competition and Qarabag,” Emery told his pre-match press conference.

“Tomorrow our objective is to win, we will give players chance to take responsibility and confidence. We are going to use tomorrow with some different players, with some coming from Under-23s. We also start to play with Laurent Koscielny.”

Arsenal have defensive issues with Rob Holding set for a considerable spell on the sidelines, but Emery is confident he has the players available to deal with the situation.

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“We have some players with injuries at centre-back – we are going to decide after tomorrow’s match whether Laurent Koscielny plays against Southampton at the weekend,” he said. “We are going to see if he can play 90 minutes.

“[But] we can use another player in this position, like Nacho Monreal, or Stephan Lichtsteiner.

“So we will decide, but first we think about the game tomorrow.”

Mesut Ozil has been included in the squad for Thursday’s game as speculation mounts that he will look to leave the club in the January transfer window.

However, Emery refused to give anything away when quizzed about Ozil’s future.

“I don’t know. Tomorrow he is in the group, the 18 players for this match,” Emery stated.

“We are going to decide if he will play tomorrow from the beginning or during the 90 minutes.”