•Arsenal’s Spanish manager Mikel Arteta
Mikel Arteta fears that Arsenal’s quest for silverware this season could be undermined by a “dangerous cycle” of mounting injuries and an unforgiving fixture list that he believes are placing huge demands on his squad.
Arteta confirmed that Declan Rice has not travelled to Belgium for Arsenal’s Champions League meeting with Club Brugge today due to illness, while Leandro Trossard and William Saliba are again unavailable, reports irishexaminer.com.
There was better news for Gabriel Jesus after the Brazil forward was added to Arsenal’s Champions League squad in place of Max Dowman, who injured his ankle at the weekend.
That is expected to rule the 15-year-old who became the youngest player in the competition’s history last month – out of action for a few weeks, with Dowman the 95th injury Arsenal have picked up since the start of last season – the second highest amount in the Premier League.
Defenders Cristhian Mosquera and Gabriel are not likely to return until the new year, while Arteta revealed last week that Kai Havertz “still needs time” after knee surgery.
Asked whether their injury record was down to bad luck, fatigue or intensity of training, the Arsenal manager said: “Training, no, because we don’t have time to train. But obviously, the fact that you are missing players, you are loading other players more, there’s a consequence to that and it’s a really dangerous circle that one.
Some of the players have played over 150 games in two seasons, so it starts to get overloaded. And you start to ask them again and again and again to do that, at some point, they will break down. But it’s a test for the team, and so far we have reacted very, very well to that.”
Arsenal spent more than £250m on new signings in the summer, but Arteta insisted he is hopeful that they will not have to go into the market again in January.
“At the moment we’re just focusing on bringing the players back, and hopefully it will be a matter of weeks,” he said.
“We know how important those weeks are going to be because we’re going to come into the period where a lot of things start to get defined in that period, and hopefully we’re going to have those players back.”
Arsenal saw their lead at the top of the Premier League cut to two points at the weekend after Aston Villa inflicted a first defeat in 18 matches, but they have the chance to virtually assure a top-eight finish in the Champions League if they can record a sixth straight victory in the Champions League group phase.
“We are frustrated with the result (against Villa), but we have to keep going,” said Gabriel Martinelli, who could become the first Arsenal player to score in five successive Champions League matches. “It’s not like everything is going wrong because we lost one game. So we stick together and prepare really well for this one.”
