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Paris Saint Germain vs Arsenal: Laurent Koscielny fit for Champions League opener

The 31-year-old scored Arsenal’s equaliser against Southampton before Santi Cazorla’s last minute victor.

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Arsene Wenger has confirmed Laurent Koscielny is available for selection for Arsenal’s opening Champions League clash against Paris Saint-Germain.

He added: “We could earlier maybe have had one or two penalties at corners”. I don’t like to speak of the decision of the referee, but we have conceded, in four games in the championship, three penalties.

“I had a lot of time to think about where to shoot my penalty, but I kept calm”, he said.

Mustafi said, “I don’t think too much about the past and I don’t think too much about the future”, he told Standard Sport.

“If you don;t concentrate for 90 minutes, you lose points”.

Arsenal’s other centre-halves, Gabriel and Per Mertesacker, are injured, Rob Holding is inexperienced and new signing Shkodran Mustafi is short of sharpness, according to Wenger. I think the likes of Lucas Perez and Alexis Sanchez will cause the PSG backline problems and the Arsenal backline might not even be tested since PSG seem to be a mess going forward.

He claims that the pair were slightly overwhelmed by the pace of the Premier League on their debut on Saturday and he will consider whether it is right to play them again so soon.

For the last 16 years in succession they have reached the second stage of the competition, only to suffer the frustration of defeat in the first knockout round for six seasons in a row. “When you lose your first home game you can not afford to drop points in the second home game because it creates a little bit an anxiety level at home and that’s not what you really want”.

“In the second half we dominated but couldn’t score”. We concentrated until the end, and that’s what gave us the victor.

“When you lose your first home game you can not afford to drop points in your second home game because it creates a little bit of an anxiety level at home, and that’s not what we want”, he said. You always want to play as soon as possible after not winning a game, which is why this is such a big match. “It is now important to get a result”.

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Southampton hosts Sparta Prague in the Europa League on Thursday.

Arsenal often accused of failing to grind out wins do exactly that against Southampton