Nuno Tavares became the first of Arsenal’s three injured senior loanees to return to his side’s matchday squad over the weekend.

As highlighted earlier this month, Arsenal’s batch of senior loanees currently aren’t playing many minutes.

Runar Alex Runarsson has lost his spot in the Cardiff City side to Jak Alnwick, and nothing has changed on that front.

Marquinhos is struggling for minutes with Nantes, and he’s away at the Pan American Games with Brazil right now. He’s impressing at the tournament, but it remains to be seen whether that changes his fortunes when he’s back in Ligue 1.

Three of the other four senior players on loan have been out injured – Kieran Tierney (Real Sociedad), Albert Sambi Lokonga (Luton Town), and Nuno Tavares (Nottingham Forest).

The good news is that Tavares was back in the Forest squad against Liverpool at the weekend.

The Arsenal loanee had returned to training with Forest earlier in the week, and he was named on the bench for the side on Sunday.

Tavares didn’t come on against Liverpool, but that was perhaps unsurprising, with his team 2-0 down at half-time and never threatening a comeback. It wasn’t a game you risk a player’s fitness in.

Tierney and Lokonga aren’t yet on the verge of comebacks, and they’re set for absences lasting months rather than weeks. They’ve both already been out for a month at the time of writing.

As for the last senior Arsenal loanee, Arthur Okonkwo continues to do well with Wrexham.

The 22-year-old kept his fourth clean sheet in eight appearances at the weekend, getting his side a win over League Two promotion rivals Notts County.