After seeing Gabriel Jesus stretched off against Manchester United on Sunday, Mikel Arteta admits that the Brazilian’s injury “doesn’t look good”.
The striker was forced off the field late in the first half of our FA Cup third-round tie against the Red Devils in some discomfort, and was immediately sent for analysis to discover the severity.
With our game against Tottenham Hotspur following just three days later, by the time of his Tuesday morning press conference Mikel still doesn’t quite have all the information as to what has happened and crucially how long Gabby will be out for, but he revealed it doesn’t look too good.
Speaking about the citation, he said: “We know more now and it's not looking at all. We need to review with one more specialist, so we will probably have better information this afternoon.
“I don’t want to confirm anything until we’ve had the final report. It’s the doctor’s job to do that, but we were very worried straight away after the game and we are very worried today.
Let’s wait until the tests.”
That has further depleted our squad going into the north London derby at Emirates Stadium, with Bulayo Saka, Ben White, Takehiro Tomiyasu, Ethan Nwaneri and Riccardo Calafiori all sidelined.
Mikel said he’ll continue to monitor the fitness of everyone right up until the last possible moment before making his team selection for the visit of our neighbours, with Calafiori rated close to returning but whether it’ll be for the derby remains open.
“We have one more training session and there are a few that could be close,” he added. ”But again, this afternoon we’ll have the full info on the squad, who is available and who is not.
“Riccardo’s] thing is not much, but again, we need another day or two. We’ve been playing every three days and 24 hours becomes really important because they are not long-term injuries, in that case for example. We will have more understanding this afternoon.”
There was good news though in that Jorginho and Jurrien Timber are OK after struggling in the latter stages of the United game. “[Jorgi] was cramping when we were playing extra-time, Jurrien [Timber] was exactly the same, so we had a few players struggling to finish the game. He’s fine.”
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