Eight weeks after surgery on his knee injury, Gabriel Jesus is back out on the grass again, according to his latest social media post.
Gabriel Jesus posted on his Instagram story on Wednesday with an encouraging update, showing himself standing on grass in his football boots again with the caption “after 8 weeks”.
Just over eight weeks ago, Jesus had just undergone surgery on a knee injury, and he was expected to miss around three months of action.
The striker has stayed on schedule so far, and a week-and-a-half ago he told the media he could be back in “four or five weeks”.
Jesus’ return to the pitch appears to tally with that assessment, as he’ll probably still need a few weeks to get up to speed before he can feature in full training with Arsenal again.
The fans will understandably get their hopes up seeing Jesus back out there again, but expectations that he could be back for the Manchester City game in under a fortnight seem unrealistic.
After City, the next big milestone will be the return of the Europa League on March 9th. That seems like a more reasonable target for the striker, giving him another month to get fully sharp.
A competitive return before that would be a welcome bonus.
It remains to be seen how Arsenal want to reintegrate Jesus, but there are plenty of u21 games going on this month if they need them.
- Feb 7, 19:00 – PSV (H)
- Feb 13, 13:00 – Wolves (A)
- Feb 17, 19:00 – West Ham (H)
- Feb 24, 19:00 – Chelsea (A)
- Mar 3, 19:00 – Liverpool (H)
Excluding Wolves away, all of those games would be local, so it would be easy enough to give Jesus some minutes if that’s the direction the club choose to go in.