Darren Bent urges Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta to drop 27-year-old player tonight

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Darren Bent has now said that he wouldn’t start Rob Holding for Arsenal against Manchester City tonight.

Bent was talking on TalkSPORT about how he would set up the Gunners if he was in charge tonight.

Arsenal fans may be glad that it’s Mikel Arteta that’s still in the dugout this evening.

In a game that might decide the fate of the Premier League title, Arsenal are missing a couple of key players.

William Saliba is unavailable, while Granit Xhaka looks unlikely to play, despite travelling with the squad.

It means Arteta could have to shift around his defence and midfield against an in-form Manchester City.

Darren Bent suggested that Rob Holding should be the man to miss out for Arsenal to make things happen.

The 27-year-old hasn’t lived up to the brilliant displays of the young Frenchman during his injury.

The prospect of him facing Erling Haaland tonight is not an easy one for many Arsenal fans to deal with.

Bent urges Arteta to drop Arsenal defender Holding

Talking through his ideal Arsenal line-up tonight, Bent said: “Rob Holding’s done OK to a point.

“You harp back to last season when the wheels started to come off for Arsenal.

“That result against Spurs, Rob Holding got himself sent off in the first 30 minutes, [he was] too tight. He gets overemotional at times Rob Holding.

“So I think, I would probably opt to take him out. I would probably put Ben White in at centre-half alongside Gabriel and potentially put Thomas Partey at right-back.

“You’ve got the options at left-back, do you play Kieran Tierney and then move [Oleksandr] Zinchenko, who plays for Ukraine in that midfield, alongside Jorginho, and then [Martin] Odegaard doing his thing.

“There are options, but the fact there’s no Saliba is massive, and even Tomiyasu. I think if Tomiyasu had been fit, he’d have started at centre-half.”

The suggestion from Bent to drop Holding may not be shared by many Arsenal fans this evening.

It would involve suddenly playing half the squad in positions they’re very unfamiliar with.

There are suggestions that Holding isn’t good enough for a side chasing the Premier League title.

Right now, Arteta has very little option but to put his faith in the Englishman tonight and hope he plays the game of his life against the Premier League’s top scorer.