Even though Arsene Wenger put out a fairly strong Arsenal side for the trip to lower league Preston North End in the FA cup, it may have been stronger with the addition of some regular first team players like Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil.
So after the Gunners made hard work of getting past Preston at Deepdale it was inevitable that Wenger was asked about his team selection and that is when the manager slipped in the bad news that the reason our young Spanish right back Hector Bellerin was not in the squad was that he had joined the list of players on the Arsenal injury list.
Metro reports the Frenchman saying, ‘Bellerin was injured yesterday in training.’
The last time Bellerin was out we really missed him so this could be a serious problem, dependingh on how long the Spaniard is out for, which the boss did not say. Could the fact that he went with young Ashley Maitland-Niles instead of Jenkinson or even Gabriel at right back be because he is thinking of the youngster as Bellerin’s cover?
Maitland-Niles did grow into the game and he seems to be more attack minded than Gabriel and that could be vital as our next games are against Swansea, Burnley and Watford and breaking them down could be harder than keeping them from scoring.
What do you think Gooners?
I wasn’t impressed with Maitland-
I’d cover using Gabriel,
Jenkinson,
Maitland
In that order. Luckily Holding can do good job in the middle allowing Gabriel to play rb
i agree with Simon_MrMac about maitland-niles. ok maybe it was only his first experience and his age but preston did attacked us from his flank. = gooner for ever
@Tweety & Simon MM
PNE kept hitting us on the right because they knew that Maitland-Niles was a youngster without much experience and that Perez was giving him next to no cover…Mustafi kept getting pulled out of position to help him out. Plus, neither of our midfielders were defending much to speak of. Yet, it’s the young gun who was made to look rubbish. Same for Monreal. He had next to zero coverage on the left, save for what Gabe gave him.
So what is the point of Jenkinson and Debuchy? If Maitland-Niles gets in ahead of those two then they really must leave ASAP.
I’m more concerned with yet another player injured in training, I know we’ve been saying this for years now but what on earth is wrong with our players or training methods to get so many small niggling injuries.
We don’t seem to hear these stories at R. M. Barca and other big European teams.
There have been comments by Martin Keown and rio ferdinand, amongst others, that the arsenal training pitches are very hard, to replicate the pitch at the emirates. They think that this puts extra stress on the joints. Sounds plausible but who knows.
As I said during the game the young lad did not seem to be at the races. Bellerin was bad against Bournemouth and this lad was worse against Preston.
The gunners need to be more ruthless and put in 100% in both half on games.keep pushing gunners.
Was Bellerins injury caused by a pulled headband?