Arsenal were doing so well on the injury front just a couple of weeks ago, and we were only waiting on Thomas Partey and Gabriel Magalhaes to return for Arteta to have a fully fit squad to choose from.
But then we had the scare of Kieran Tierney pulling out of the Crystal Palace game and Arteta was worried about how serious the injury was. But now it has been revealed by David Ornatein that our worries were unfounded….
We also have good news on Thomas Partey, who had a little warm up in the Palace game, and could now be ready to play the full 90 minutes. Mikel Arteta told Arsenal.com: “Well he’s made the right step. Obviously he hasn’t played much football in the last four months. He had an injury in exactly the same place he had before when he got injured against Spurs. Now we have the reassurance that he can compete. He did it for 25, 30 minutes. He did it well, he didn’t feel anything so now we’re going to be looking for the next step.”
Let’s hope he manages to play more than one game before going down with another injury this time.
But It is not so good news for Pablo Mari, who has been awesome in our recent run of clean sheets. Arteta continued: “He had a calf injury in training [on Wednesday]. I think he will miss a few matches. He’s another one we will lose but we’ve got Gabi [Magalhaes] back after COVID, which is good news, we’ve got Thomas back as well. Let’s focus on the positives.”
Of course we still have David Luiz, Rob Holding and now Gabriel to choose from, so it shouldn’t be too much of a worry for Arteta.
Perhaps our injury list is not so bad after all…