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Football London
Football London
Sport
Tashan Deniran-Alleyne

What Dani Ceballos and Eddie Nketiah did after heated exchange ahead of Arsenal vs Fulham

Arsenal are in action against Fulham this afternoon as the new Premier League season gets underway.

Gunners manager Mikel Arteta has named a strong team at Craven Cottage - although there are perhaps one or two surprises with Mohamed Elneny getting the nod over Dani Ceballos and no William Saliba in the matchday squad.

Also on the bench is Eddie Nketiah.

Arteta: Arsenal's squad balance is not ideal

And it would appear that a couple of players aren't too happy about not starting.

In the pre-match training routine Nketiah and Ceballos got into a heated exchange.

As picked up by the BT Sport cameras, the England u21 international flies into the Spaniard who doesn't take too kindly to the attempted challenge and hits out by pushing the striker in the chest.

Things almost escalated even further as the pair squared up to each other before the rest of the Arsenal substitutes intervened.

Interestingly, as reported by the Evening Standard, Ceballos and Nketiah both came out before kick-off with the subs and sat at opposite ends of the bench.

Perhaps their moods would have been improved after Alexandre Lacazette broke the deadlock early in the first-half as he scrambled home from close range.

Speaking ahead of the game, Arteta did discuss the attitude of his squad.

"What I see from them is that they want more, that they are not satisfied and this is what we want to show tomorrow," he told reporters. "That we want to go another step forward.

"What we done, it doesn't count for anything. It gives us confidence and belief in what we can do, that we can compete against any team, but this is a completely different competition.

"It's a long race and we have to be consistent.

"There is a big gap on what happened in the last few seasons when we were out of the Champions League spots, and this is our challenge for the season."

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