Arsenal travel to Brentford to take on a side whose home record is extremely challenging. The Gunners know that a win will see them close the gap to Liverpool to six points having played a game more and can open the gap to Chelsea to four and Manchester City to eight.

Mikel Arteta witnessed Chelsea fail where his Arsenal side succeeded as the Blues lost to Ipswich to allow the opportunity to turn what was a four-point deficit a fortnight ago on its head. The team have been working to cope with the absence of Bukayo Saka and have been further hurt by other issues in the wide areas.

Arsenal posted to their official website a glimpse behind the scenes at the training session ahead of the trip to Brentford. Looking through each, football.london breaks down some of the insight we have gleaned from the photos.

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Four players absent

The first point of note is who is not pictured in the training images ahead of the game. Arsenal have had a rare extended break between games that other sides have not been privy to.

From those included, there were four players not seen in the pictures. Bukayo Saka and Raheem Sterling were the most recent injuries that Arsenal have faced and naturally were not seen.

Ben White and Takehiro Tomiyasu are both long-term absentees and were also absent for training. It will be good news that it seems there are no new worries before the New Year.

Youngster involved

Mikel Arteta had faced scrutiny for not using enough of his young stars throughout his time at the club. That has, however, been addressed, with both Ethan Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly getting plenty of exposure – both of whom were involved in training.

Added to them were Josh Gower and Maldini Kacurri. The latter of whom made his first senior appearance in the League Cup earlier in the season.

Tommy Setford joined Neto as the available goalkeeper. Neto was spotted on the edge of a team talk from the manager but it was Setford pictured in the action with hope he could take on a second-choice role in the future.

The bib hints

One method of trying to understand who might indeed be starting the next game is seeing the teams used in training. For instance, Declan Rice, Martin Odegaard, Kai Havertz, Gabriel Jesus and Gabriel Martinelli were all seen training without them.

That said, William Saliba was indeed spotted later on wearing one. It would be very surprising if the Frenchman does not start the game on Wednesday evening and perhaps this is not something therefore to read too much into.