Should Arsenal's Mikel Arteta shuffle the deck vs. Crystal Palace?

Mikel Arteta has an interesting decision to make regarding his squad selection against Palace.

Arsenal faces Crystal Palace in the Premier League, but you can bet your bottom dollar that Mikel Arteta's eye will be cast toward the Champions League semi-final clash against PSG.

With the Gunners in good shape in the league to secure top four with a five-point gap over Manchester City who are in third, plus Arsenal has a game in hand too.

So one could say the push for top four is in good hands, particularly if the Gunners beat Palace and their lead extends to eight points over City.

But with Palace sitting 12th in the league and just five points off eighth, they have a lot to play for too, so this will be anything but a walk in the park.

For Mikel Arteta, his team selection, like prior to the Brentford game will tell us a lot about the priorities and given the enormity of where the club finds itself in the Champions League, there is a thought that the Spaniard might shuffle the deck and rest some players.

Should Arteta rotate squad vs. Palace?

There is validity to that thought, given how thin the squad is and any injury to key players now could spell disaster, particularly Bukayo Saka who was the subject of a nasty red card tackle against Ipswich Town in a 4-0 win.

He should be one that we think might merit being pushed to the bench to escape any potential injury before the PSG game. But with six days from the Gunners' clash against Palace and the home game against PSG, could that factor into Arteta's thinking regarding how he sets his side up against Palace?

"Yeah, we have more days," Arteta said via arsenal.com. "The amount of options that we have is not that many, especially because of where some of the players are coming and the amount of minutes that they can play. But it's good to have a little gap because we are really short in numbers."

Given that Arteta can't swing too many changes, it might be a case of what we saw against Brentford, with Saka, Jurrien Timber, Myles Lewis-Skelly, Martin Odegaard and Mikel Merino pushed to the bench.

Top four is the objective in the league, which is nearly completed, but the Champions League is the big carrot here, and it is why we think squad rotation will happen against Palace.

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