Arsenal are continuing their pre-season with a trip to Norway to face Viking Stavanger on Friday, and Arsene Wenger has already told us that Mesut Ozil, Laurent Koscielny and Olivier Giroud will not be involved after their international exertions.
The good news is that Alexis Sanchez has not been badly affected by his injury from the Copa America Final, and so will be involved in the two Scandinavian games. Jack Wilshere has also had a knee injury but Wenger has assured us it is not serious and he HOPES he will be involved. “It’s a slight patella problem but I think he should be with us on tour on Thursday,” Le Prof said. “I hope he will, yes.”
We already know that Per Mertesacker will be out until Christmas, and poor Danny Welbeck is still set to be out for most of the season again, but as Wenger has said “everyone else will be available” then we can assume thatGabriel has got over his tonsilitus and will be travelling to Norway. It usually is only acute for about a week so he should be okay by now.
A bigger worry is the fitness of our little Spaniard Santi Cazorla, who is struggling to get back to his usual level. Wenger thinks he will not be available for at least four weeks. He said after the Chivas game: “At the moment he is not completely there on the fitness front. That’s why I took him off at half-time.
“He’s a bit behind the others physically but I think he will be alright, maybe not on Aug. 15, but at the end of August he should be alright.”
The only other Arsenal player out is Carl Jenkinson. He is not even listed on Arsenal.com‘s injury list, but PhysioRoom is reporting that the lifelong Gooner will be out for another three months with his Cruciate Ligament injury. So he will probably be with the club until Christmas while he recovers and then Wenger will decide whether to send him out on loan again.
So that is all there is, and if Wenger brings in the promised replacements for Welbeck and Mertesacker we should be good to go for the new season.
Fingers crossed no-one else gets injured in the next two weeks!
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