Cedric Soares, Fabio Vieira, and Emile Smith Rowe all came through their u21 appearances without problems and are now available to face Bournemouth.

Arsenal have had a number of injury concerns in pre-season and the early stages of the new campaign, but most of them seem to have cleared up now.

Fabio Vieira and Emile Smith Rowe were two of the players to miss the opening game of the season against Crystal Palace through injury, and they both joined Cedric Soares in playing for the Arsenal u21s in midweek to build fitness.

The pair were withdrawn at half-time of the contest, just as Takehiro Tomiyasu was during his u21 appearance against Manchester United.

The assumption was that this was a pre-planned change, but you never really know. Fortunately, Mikel Arteta has confirmed all three players are now fit to play for the first team again.

“Everybody is okay,” Arteta said. “As you saw we had Cedric, Fabio, and Emile playing with the u21s. They played with us (in training this week) and are available for selection.”

It’s clear that Arteta meant that there are no new problems in the squad, because it’s not quite accurate to say that “everybody” is okay.

Arsenal do have one serious injury to Reiss Nelson, who suffered a quad problem in training and is facing a couple of months out.

But aside from Nelson, the club’s fitness situation looks very good right now. Arsenal have a solid starting lineup and an increasingly strong set of alternatives, with everyone fit again.

Assuming no changes to the starting lineup, Arsenal can pick a bench of nine from Turner, Tierney, Holding, Tomiyasu, Bellerin, Cedric, Smith Rowe, Lokonga, Elneny, Maitland-Niles, Vieira, Pepe, Marquinhos, and Nketiah on Saturday.

That’ll probably make the strongest bench they’ve been able to name in a while, and not a moment too soon, with the re-introduction of five substitutions per match.