The internationals could not have come at a better time for Arsenal yet again as we have an incredible list of players on the treatment table at the moment. It is quite amazing that we have beaten both Sevilla and Burnley quite easily given that Thomas Partey, Emile Smith-Rowe, Martin Odegaard, Gabriel Jesus, Eddie Nketiah and now Ben White has joined that list after not appearing on the team sheet against Burnley yesterday.
Mikel Arteta was asked about his absence after yesterday’s match. He replied: “Yesterday in training he wasn’t comfortable, he didn’t look right, but Ben won’t give you much, he always wants to be on the pitch and always wants to hide anything that is in there, but we highlighted it, we noticed in the last few weeks as well something in there, and we wanted to protect him today. It was the right call from the physios and the medical department and tomorrow we will assess him and understand what’s happening.”
Arteta was also asked about our captain Martin Odegaard and he said: “I don’t know. I’m going to have a meeting now with the medical department to understand everybody’s situation and I think he is going to be back after the International break but I don’t know exactly what the decision is and the communication at the moment.”
Hopefully all our injured players will not be forced to join up with their countries, but considering our problems Arteta is quite pleased with our position ahead of the international break: “… we deserve to be in the position where we are, in a really strong position going into the international break, it gives us some momentum, we need to get players back because at the moment we have eight players not available and that’s a lot, and in December we have 11 games coming up, so we better get everybody back quickly.”
Obviously we can only hope that we will get most of our players back after the break, but even half of them would give us a boost and a chance to rotate a little more often. Arteta seems to be managing our depleted squad quite well at the moment but the more the merrier as far as I am concerned.
As least Arsenal fans can go into the break knowing we are still firmly in contention in the intense title race, depite our injury problems.
COYG!
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