Arteta was quoted in the Nottingham Post as saying on Friday: “We are really short with numbers, really, really short,” Arteta admitted.
“We have some issues, but we will know more tomorrow (Saturday).
“We want to play and that is how we are approaching every game. We want to do everything to play the game and don’t expect anything different than to play on Sunday.
Arsenal are travelling to Nottingham today to play Forest in the Third Round of the FA Cup, and although Mikel Arteta knows the importance of progressing in the trophy that we have won more than any other team, he is still unsure which of his players will be available for selection this morning.
Last night he was asked how bad the Covid situation was at the club, and he told Arsenal.com: “I will have them [the players] all tomorrow, we have some issues, but we will know more tomorrow.”
“For me now, it’s very difficult to plan. It’s no priority, you have to go game-by-game, regardless of the competition. You want to plan what’s going to happen in two or three games and you decide for key players not to play because they’re going to play in other matches, it doesn’t work like that, because maybe the next day they get Covid or something happens and you don’t have them! We go game-by-game, try to win every single game and then the rest will be much better.”
When the Boss was asked to clarify how many of his players were affected by coronavirus, he said: “It’s from Covid and injuries as well. I cannot say anything else because obviously I don’t want to give anything away, as you can imagine. Tomorrow we will know more. We are really short in numbers, but we want to play and that’s how we are approaching every game. We will do everything to plan for the game and we’re going to expect them to play on Sunday.”
So it sounds like we will be weakened for sure, but won’t know for certain until we see the team sheet. But we do know that Arteta has now added the youngsters Mika Biereth, Omari Hutchinson and Salah Oulad M’Hand to the playing squad who will be joining Charlie Patino in having a chance to feature.
I am sure we will know more about the situation after the game, but with our League Cup semifinal coming up on Thursday, we can only hope that it is not too devastating for our first team players…
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