Mikel Arteta met with the press on Thursday ahead of the start of the 22/23 campaign and delivered a positive update for three of Arsenal’s four injured players.

As we reported on Wednesday, Emile Smith Rowe is not expected to be involved in Arsenal’s season opener due to a groin issue, so we can assume that he is the fourth player that Arteta wouldn’t name in his press conference.

Smith Rowe will hopefully join in with full training next week.

As for the other three?

Fabio Vieira (ankle), who has yet to play a minute of pre-season, Takehiro Tomiyasu (calf) and Kieran Tierney (knee) are all expected to be involved in the  game, although I wouldn’t be surprised to see Vieira remain on the bench if he does make the squad.

Arsenal go into the match in far better shape than they did their opener last year when they had a number of senior starters out with covid and their request to postpone the game was denied due to the fact it was kicking off the Premier League season.

On a random note, this is the third time in three years that Arsenal have kicked off the Premier League in the first match as the away side.

The odds of that happening are 8,000/1.