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Arsenal’s preparations for Sunday’s match against Wolves were disrupted after their flight home from Thursday’s Europa League match against Molde was cancelled due to fog. The Arsenal squad, which did not include some of their key players, will now fly back on Friday morning ahead of training in the afternoon. It comes after the team had already been forced to fly to Norway a day earlier than usual due to Covid-19 testing regulations. The delay is not being seen as a significant problem for Arsenal but it remains less than ideal for Mikel Arteta as he tries to manage the workload for his players ahead of a crucial stage of the season. Arteta used the Europa League trip as a chance to rest some of his most important players, with the likes of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Bukayo Saka, Thomas Partey and Willian all remaining in London to recover or rebuild their fitness. A few hours earlier, they had comfortably defeated Molde 3-0 to ensure qualification for the knockout stages of the Europa League. Nicolas Pepe, Reiss Nelson and Folarin Balogun scored their goals, with Pepe impressing in the first game since his red card against Leeds United. “We all know where his level is,” said Arteta of Pepe after the match. “All the time the question is how often he can get to that level, and how he contributes to other aspects of the game. Today is the example. “That is the level he needs to hit, and from there he needs to keep improving because he is capable of doing it. You can see that every time he gets in those positions in the final third, he is a real threat and a really difficult player to control. He can go inside, outside, he can shoot, he can cross, he can go in behind you as well. That is what we expect from him.”
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