A month and a half after the 2017/18 season came to an end, 18 Arsenal players return to training this week.

For some Arsenal stars, the football still hasn’t stopped, with the World Cup continuing until mid-July. Much of the rest of the squad are already returning to the club to begin preparations for the coming campaign though, with the first pre-season friendly taking place on July 14th.

Here’s the full list of players expected in training this week:

  • Goalkeepers: Bernd Leno, Emi Martinez, Petr Cech
  • Defenders: Hector Bellerin, Rob Holding, Shkodran Mustafi, Calum Chambers, Konstantinos Mavropanos, Sead Kolasinac, Carl Jenkinson
  • Midfielders: Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Aaron Ramsey, Ainsley Maitland-Niles
  • Forwards: Alexandre Lacazette, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Jeff Reine-Adelaide, Lucas Perez, Chuba Akpom

As you can tell, the main area where Arsenal will still be lacking players is in midfield. Granit Xhaka is still at the World Cup with Switzerland, and Mohamed Elneny won’t return for a few weeks after Egypt’s elimination. The same goes for Mesut Özil after Germany crashed out in the group stage.

Then there’s the departure of Jack Wilshere, and the fact the rumoured deal for Lucas Torreira still isn’t over the line. Even if and when it is confirmed, Torreira will still have a few weeks of holiday after his participation with Uruguay at the World Cup. Arsenal will have to make do with what they have.

One player on this list has already been back in training for a couple of weeks now: Emi Martinez. The goalkeeper posted an update on Twitter on June 21st along with Matt Macey and coach Sal Bibbo. Hopefully that means he’ll be raring to go, and ready to challenge Cech and Leno for minutes in pre-season.

https://twitter.com/emimartinezz1/status/1009764580808167424