Arsene Wenger hails Arsenal's attacking luxuries and hints at change in League Cup selection policy

Arsene Wenger has praised the depth of his attacking options at Arsenal, suggesting that they give the club an opportunity to win the League Cup for the first time under his stewardship as he plans to assemble another mixed group for Tuesday night's (24 October) fourth round tie against Championship promotion chasers Norwich City.

The Gunners have been able to rotate their squad to cope with the demands of challenging on multiple fronts during the early stages of the 2017-18 season, with many changes made for the slender third round victory over Doncaster Rovers and a Europa League campaign that has thus far yielded three wins from as many games against Cologne, BATE Borisov and Red Star Belgrade.

It is the final third where Wenger arguably has the most room to manoeuvre, with Theo Walcott and Puskas Award winner Olivier Giroud typically called upon to start in the cup competitions to allow the likes of club-record signing Alexandre Lacazette and contract rebel Alexis Sanchez to rest for Premier League duty.

"That's the luxury I have at the moment and the difficulty I have as well," the manager was quoted as saying by Arsenal's official website. "All these players do well, play well and they deserve to play.

"Fortunately, we have important games every week, so I can give competition to everybody. We have so much offensive force on the bench as well. It's really a strong point of the club at the moment."

The League Cup - currently sponsored by Carabao - is the only major domestic trophy not claimed by Wenger in his 21 seasons at Arsenal, with the Frenchman typically using English football's secondary club competition as an opportunity to blood fresh young talent.

And while the likes of Ainsley Maitland-Niles, Reiss Nelson, Joe Willock, Chuba Akpom, Matt Macey, Ben Sheaf, Jay Dasilva, Eddie Nketiah, Marcus McGuane and Jordi Osei-Tutu will all hope to be in contention to face Norwich, the depth of options currently available among Arsenal's senior ranks appears to hint at a slightly different direction for this year's edition.

"I always used [the League Cup] to give a chance to young boys," Wenger added. "We went to the final with a very young team [in 2010-11] and nearly won it.

"I always focus on winning trophies in the Premier League and FA Cup domestically, and always used the League Cup as an education for our young players. But with this team I have the squad to go further, so let's see. Let's focus on winning the match against Norwich and then we'll see where we will go."

The likes of Jack Wilshere and Alex Iwobi are also likely to start against Norwich with Arsenal only two days removed from their 5-2 thrashing of Everton and set to host Swansea City on Saturday, although Shkodran Mustafi (thigh), Danny Welbeck (hamstring), Calum Chambers (hip), David Ospina (groin) and Santi Cazorla (plantaris) all remained sidelined.