David Luiz will be unavailable to face his former club Chelsea on Wednesday, but Mikel Arteta gave a relatively positive update on the other injury concerns.

After last week, Arsenal had a few injury worries going into Wednesday’s London derby at Stamford Bridge. David Luiz, Granit Xhaka, and Pablo Mari all missed the match at the weekend, and Emile Smith Rowe was forced off early.

Unfortunately, Mikel Arteta confirmed that David Luiz remains unavailable for this week’s match. However, he described the rest as ‘in contention’, depending on how things go in their final pre-match training session.

“Well the situation with David [Luiz] is that he is not yet recovered,” Arteta said. “We will see how he does in the next few weeks. The rest are still in contention but we will have to see today how they come.”

I wouldn’t by any means read this as Arteta saying Xhaka, Mari, and Smith Rowe are all likely to start. It’s just good to hear that the trio aren’t ruled out completely, meaning there’s still a chance they play again in the final few games of the season.

On a less positive note, Arteta also suggested there might be an injury or two we haven’t already heard about.

“There were some issues over the weekend again,” Arteta explained. “We are playing every three days and there is no time to train yet, today is the first day so we will have to wait and see. Yes [there were] some injuries, yes.”

At least once the season is over, most of the squad should get a break. There will be some players like Granit Xhaka, Bernd Leno, Kieran Tierney, and Bukayo Saka who are likely to head off to international tournaments, but most of the rest will take holiday.