Arsenal may still be suffering with injuries and Covid problems ahead of the big game against Chelsea on Sunday, and even the Blues will be missing Christian Pulusic due to Covid protocols, but otherwise Thomas Tuchel has very few injury problems of his own.
We have already been told that Martin Odegaard won’t be registered in time for this weekend’s game, but it appears that Tuchel is expecting that his new superstriker Romelu Lukaku will be fit and available to play.
Tuchel told the official Chelsea website: ‘We have one more training session to go but the week was a heavy load for him because he was in the group with the late starters from our guys so it was an overload week so far,’ added the boss.
‘Today [Friday] was lower intensity and tomorrow we have important training for the match but we are hoping he will be on the pitch for Sunday and things look like it.”
He gave us Gunners even more bad news when he said that N´Golo Kante and Hakim Ziyech are also both likely to be in contention as well after missing last week’s 3-0 win over Crystal Palace. He said; ‘Hakim and N’Golo were both in training today and they had no problems. We need to have a more intense session tomorrow with them and the team before we decide but right now it seems positive that both can be in the squad for Sunday.’
So it looks like Chelsea are set to field an even stronger team than the one that beat Palace, whereas Arsenal are only hoping that Aubameyang can add to our firepower.
It doesn’t really matter though, as Arteta always beats Chelsea!