Mikel Arteta gave a triple injury update following Arsenal’s win over Chelsea on Tuesday night, providing both good news and bad news.
Arsenal overcame Chelsea on Tuesday night to reach the League Cup final, but they had to do it without a number of first-team players.
Max Dowman remains absent with his ankle problem, but Mikel Merino has now joined him as a long-term absentee after foot surgery. Then Bukayo Saka and Martin Odegaard also missed Tuesday’s game, and Mikel Arteta gave updates on the three new injuries after the match.
“With [Mikel] Merino, yeah, he’s going to be out for months unfortunately, with a foot injury,” Arteta confirmed to beIN SPORTS. “Bukayo [Saka] hopefully it’s not going to be too much, but we have to wait [for] tomorrow and more scans.
“Martin [Odegaard], if everything goes well, hopefully he was going to be available for the weekend.”
Before the game, Tom Canton had reported for Football.London that Odegaard’s injury was minor, with Arsenal just not taking any risks with the midfielder ahead of the weekend.
As for Saka, Simon Collings reported for The S*n that the winger is believed to have suffered a muscular injury in his hip area.
Though Saka’s injury is reportedly not thought to be serious, it was clearly enough to rule him out against Chelsea, and Collings reports that the hope is that he’ll be fit when Arsenal face Tottenham Hotspur later this month.
If that game is the target, Saka would miss upcoming fixtures against Sunderland, Brentford, Wigan Athletic, and Wolves in the meantime.
With any luck, Odegaard will be straight back into the squad this weekend, and Saka and Dowman will join him by making their own comebacks later this month.