Arsene Wenger has given us a full injury update ahead of the Premier League opener against Leicester City.
We had to ring the changes for the Community Shield match against Chelsea, with Alexis Sanchez, Mesut Ozil, Laurent Koscielny among those missing from our starting line-up.
He has assured us of returns to fitness for the likes of Shkodran Mustafi, but question marks remain on the likelihood that others will be fit. Alexis Sanchez is one who will definitely not make it back however.
“I have plenty of uncertainties about the players who didn’t play against Chelsea,” said the boss. “For example Ramsey, Ozil, Mertesacker… and of course Koscielny is suspended.
“I have players coming back who have not played, like Mustafi. Alexis will not be available for example, so I cannot go into the game with too many uncertainties. I can take a gamble on one, maybe maximum two, but I focus more on the players who had the right number of competitive minutes in recent weeks.
“We are well prepared and ready for a fight, and of course ambitious as well.
“I think we have a good level of physical preparation. All our players got a decent number of minutes of good competition, so overall the preparation of the squad looks good.
“Then we need to transform the quality of the preparation into points and that is of course a pragmatic view, but what matters is we win the next game and start in a strong way, which we didn’t do last year. That’s what we want to achieve this season.”
Could Leicester prove a problem for us on Friday? Do we believe that Alexis is actually injured?
Pat J