Gabriel Magalhaes had to fight off three attackers as they tried to enter his home and steal the keys to his car, and the manager was asked to comment on the incident.
The Brazilian was confronted outside his house as he returned home from a night out, with three attackers demanding the keys to his £45,000 Mercedes, but the defender managed to fend them off, and one of the criminals has already been charged because of it.
One of the three must have lost their hats during the incident, with DNA from the hat leading police to a known criminal Abderaham Muse.
It remains to be seen if the defender will need time to recover, or whether he is in the right frame of mind to play, but the manager has praised his character for how he dealt with the shocking event when asked to comment during his pre-match press conference.
“Obviously it is not a nice thing to go through when you have family involved and they are trying to access your house,” Arteta is quoted at Arsenal.com as stating. “Gabi showed a lot of character, you see the reaction he had straight away. Credit to the boy. After that he was fine. Obviously he was shocked, there were a few things he wanted to change in his life to try to prevent those things happening and the club gave him all the support that was needed to try to forget about the situation, learn from it and move on.”
The defender showed great instincts to fend off his attackers, but I would imagine that he could well have had some sleepless nights from all the emotions, with possible fears about his family or their home being targeted again.
It wouldn’t be a huge shock to see him start the upcoming match on the bench, but we hope he is in the right frame of mind to compete, as he would no doubt be a loss to our line-up if he wasn’t available.
Patrick