Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta has confirmed that both Gabriel Martinelli and Oleksandr Zinchenko are currently a doubt to feature against PSV on Thursday evening.
The Gunners will be looking to seal their place in the knockout rounds of the Europa League with a win over PSV Eindhoven tomorrow evening, knowing that a win would also see them move to within a point of sealing top spot in the group also.
While the boss will be expected to make a number of changed from his starting line-up, as he has done for each of his previous selections in the competition, it will still come as a worry to hear that one of our key players has been missing from training, and looks set to be ruled out from the squad on Thursday also.
Martinelli has been amongst our best performers this term, and him getting a break at the Emirates in midweek might not be the worst thing, but it would have been nice to have made that decision alone, and not because he has been unable to train.
Arteta named both Martinelli and Zinchenko as doubts for the upcoming clash in his pre-match press conference however, but did play down fears by claiming that neither was definitely missing, leading us to believe that they could well be ready to make a return for the weekend’s fixtures.
While this sounds positive, we have heard similar about the Ukrainian since he picked up his injury, but he appears to be struggling to work his way back to fitness at present, which leaves me with little hope that he will in fact be back any time soon.
Patrick
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Although we need to secure top spot in this group we don’t want to burn out players so it’s a case of trying to get a mixture of youth and squad players and first tamers…
Turner
Cedric. Holding gab Tierney
Loko xakai
Marq. Nekitha. Nelson
You’r playing with 10 players mate!!add F Veira to you Line up….
@ Jim Wall
Viera in the 3 with xakai and loko
I did not like us using our top guns away in Norway. I felt at least three of them should have stayed at home while working on a game plan or a wee tactic for the Leeds clash.
Is Smithy still injured, at the least he won’t be match-fit? Arteta has done an incredible job in keeping Tomiyasu, White, Tierney, and Zinchenko all match-fit (Zinchenko is almost back now). We need to have similar with Silky Saka and Marvelous Martinelli, options to keep them match-fit and rested, that’d be a good step. Those two probably put more oxygen or lung power into a game than in any other area of the field