Morning all.
We are in EFL Cup 3rd round action this evening when we travel to League One side Port Vale. Before we get into the possible team for this evening, Mikel Arteta did confirm the knee injury to Noni Madueke, but after initial reports suggested he’d be out for around two months, the manager sounded a little more hopeful, saying:
It looks he’s going to be out for a few weeks. We don’t know yet [if it’s 2 months], we’re probably going to have to scan him next week again. He felt something at the beginning of the match, he tried to carry on, and at half-time, he was too sore, so let’s see.
And on the player:
He was gutted, obviously. It’s very disappointing to see because he was in such a good state. He looked like a real threat, he was getting some consistency, some flow into the team and he looked like a real threat. so it’s a big miss for us.
I do wonder if the fact he’s just arrived played a part in him trying to carry on when perhaps he shouldn’t. New club, new fans, a big game at home, you can understand the temptation to try and play through it when the safest move to is to signal you have a problem. Especially if you’re a player who has some injury history down the years. Anyway, it is what it is now, so let’s wish him a speedy recovery.
There’s also a problem for new signing Piero Hincapie, who would likely have played this evening if he’d been fit. Arteta explained:
He picked up a little groin injury. We’ll have to assess him again in the next few days to see how he goes. There’s been a change of load, and he didn’t really have a pre-season after the surgery that he had. We’ll have to see in the next week or so how he is.
I had no idea he’d had surgery in the summer, so there’s another little issue for us to deal with. It doesn’t sound too serious, so hopefully he can return sooner rather than later. His absence does mean Arteta is going to have to pick at least one ‘senior’ defender to start this evening who he might otherwise have given some time off, so let’s see who that is. He’s ready to rotate though, saying:
A lot of players that … fully deserve the minutes. Kepa, for sure, is one of them. He’s been with us, his attitude, the way he supports us in every aspect of his role in the best possible manner. All this as well, they deserve more minutes than what they’re getting.
So maybe tonight we see something like: Kepa, White, Mosquera, Calafiori, Lewis-Skelly, Norgaard, Merino, Nwaneri, Trossard, Saka, Martinelli.
I have a suspicion he’ll give Saka minutes ahead of Newcastle, just to try and get him up to speed ahead of the weekend. That’s the way Arteta will view it, while we’ll all be sitting there terrified of something happening to a key player in a game you wouldn’t ordinarily want to pick him in. But he is just coming back from injury, so a little match sharpness would make some sense, whether that’s from the start or late on.
The options aren’t there in the front three to really shift things around. He could easily pick Viktor Gyokeres to see if some goals do him some good, and there’s the possibility that Martin Odegaard could play too, which might give you scope to play Nwaneri from the right rather than Saka. He could also give a start to Max Dowman, but he sounded a bit cautious about that in his press conference. Regardless, with the injuries we have, there are going to be one or two in the starting XI that might make people a bit anxious.
Ultimately, that fear is borne out of our recent injury record, and the worry we’ll lose somebody else. Which I think is perfectly reasonable given the way things have gone so far this season. Pressed on the frequency of injuries, Arteta said:
We looked at everything. The one with Noni is bad luck; it’s a very unfortunate incident. With Kai, something similar. With Ben White, it was similar. With Martin, same as all the guys that have been out, very similar, because he damaged his shoulder twice during the same action on the floor, which is very unlikely to happen. With Bukayo, it was more of a muscular injury with the hamstring, maybe something to look more in depth, and we absolutely did that. We try to keep that as low as possible; that’s what we are trying to do.
Anyway, let’s hope we come through tonight with a win, and unscathed in terms of further problems. There’s a very tough game at the weekend, and we need as many fit and available as possible for that one.
As ever, we will have live blog coverage for you later on, and all the post-game stuff on Arseblog News.
—
For some extra reading this morning, Lewis’ new tactics column looks back at the game against Man City and explores how the starting XI impacted our ability to cause the opposition problems. Well worth a read.
Also, Arseblog app users, there have been updates to iOS and Android which you can download now, with further tweaks still to come, as well as improvements to our player ratings system on Arseblog News.
—
Right, I’ll leave it there for now. Catch you later for the game.
