Mikel Arteta is a doubt for Arsenal’s Champions League clash with Olympiakos on Wednesday evening.
Speaking in his pre-match press conference Arsene Wenger confirmed that the Spaniard picked up a small knock on his ankle against Chelsea and is now facing a late fitness test.
Abou Diaby, who also limped off at the weekend, has already been ruled out for three weeks leaving the boss slightly short on numbers in midfield.
Having been shifted to the centre of the park in Saturday’s defeat Aaron Ramsey looks likely to continue alongside Santi Cazorla with young Frenchman Francis Coquelin the most likely candidate to replace Arteta if the former-Everton man is deemed unfit. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain could also deputise in the centre of the park.
The boss also confirmed that Wojciech Szczesny is still ‘two to three’ weeks away from a first team return.
Young winger Serge Gnabry, who impressed during a short cameo on his debut in the Capital One Cup against Coventry, has also been included in the 18-man squad.
Shit!
Sob 🙁 It feels like the fookin wheels are coming off again. Every fookin year. Why me, why us?
Actually, fook it. Lets Coq em! Let Frimpong em.
Come On You Beautiful Fookin Gooners!
Coq!
Yep, I’m up!
Show them how hard you are!
Distribute your balls well coq!
Oh to have a coq at the arse.
Thank god we have cock jokes to soften the blow, no pun intended by the way.
You still feeling ill, or you ready to own tomorow?
and so it begins… the annual injury crisis..
More like an overreacting fan.
Yeah, it’s a shame we can’t stay completely injury free like every other team in football.
But it is a shame when we dont have good replacements because we did not buy a backup keeper or experienced dm type to replace song.
cmon Neutral, that makes too much sense.
Strengthening our squad is not the Arsenal way.
Selling key players however is our forte!
Actually, I’m quite happy with the Coq coming in as a sub. He has powers of concentration greater than a goldfish, more than Songenbauer at any rate, so It’s yet to reach disaster level S (for Squillaci).
Look at United and their injury free back four! He he he.
There is plenty of cover, lets not get hysterical, we have a stronger bench now than we have had for a while and one of the luxury’s of that is not having to risk one of our best players in a match that we shouldn’t have too much trouble winning without him. There are a lot of players that can’t get a game at the moment and hopefully they will rise to the occasion when they get the chance.
Unless it is a serious injury, then we are fucked!
Enough cover in the form of coquelin. A mid of cazorla, ox/ramsey, coq should do well for this one. Field a strong line up though, olympiakos have won 5 of their openning 5 in their league.
Arteta should resume duty at westham. Come on you gooners!
i’d like to see Verm moved onto a defensive midfielder position for such a game. he’s definitely an attack-minded defender, so it would be interesting to see how he copes with that. play him there as a simple ball clearing man, who drags with the ball forward just sometimes, and move ball playing a little bit further the pitch. i’d like to see that. we wouldn’t leave empty spaces in defence then, and there would be place for all, the Boss, the BFG and him.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Verma, but his passing isn’t anywhere near as good as Arteta’s…
yeah, that’s why i’m talking about moving the ball playing further, so others can do it. i don’t think Gilberto Silva was a good passer either, or Vieira, for that matter..
I’m not so sure. Yep, the Verm is great when he is marauding forwards but certainly a defensively minded midfielder is more than just a good centre back that makes the occasional run? Verm at left back last season highlighted how specialist the fullback role is. Santi seems to be aware of the position of every other player before the ball gets to his boot. All midfielders need a similar type of awareness. A centre back’s defensive awareness is a similar but succinctly different type of awareness. By focusing on their individual specialities, players acquire a sixth sense for the… Read more »
VIEIRA AND GILBERTO NOT GOOD PASSERS OF THE BALL!?!?!? I guess you’re probably right since they were the central midfield partnership in the most free-flowing attacking side in modern English football history. WOW.
[…] 来源：[Arseblog News] […]
So nice of Di Matteo to have his players spend the game kicking our midfield.
Since you’ve mentioned Di Matteo – he surely has to be the luckiest manager in the world to have won the champions league so early on when so many greats haven’t won it – including our own Le Prof.
Especially the manner in which Chelsea won the title was vomit inducing…..But the day his luck will run out – he will have such a spectacular downfall that AVB would seem some sort of a genius!!
NOOOOOOOOOO!!
Of all the people for us to be missing, Arteta’s the one I’m most worried about. Losing the best passer in all of Europe doesn’t bode well for us. Hoping he passes that fitness test, but I would rather see him rested so it doesn’t end up being some long-term thing that bugs us all season.
Arteta is the only position we don’t have a replacement for. Jack could do fine in this role, bout although he’s back, he’s not quite that back.
My worry is more the fact that Ramsey despite his habit of doing nothing consistantly is going to stay a regular number one. The team before the city game was solid and barring injuries I see no reason it should’ve been changed.
Indeed, creating chances and getting forward into goalscoring positions is only for idiots, we don’t want any of that shit here.
Hey now…I also criticize Ramsey sometimes but he has been quite good coming from the bench. In addition, his performance on the right against Man City was quite good. On Saturday however, the injury to Diaby messed with the gameplan and he had to play in the center. His performance there wasn’t up to standard but neither were a lot of others in the team.
We need to stand by our players and booing him is not going to help anyone…
I support Ramsey. Would like to see him used more as a sub to gain confidence, but whatever has to happen, I suppose.
The Coq preparing to go Greek. Ouch.
Coq is just about to go all in!. Be afraid olympiakos, be very afraid.
When Arsene says little knock it´s okay. He just needs to give him a rest. Indeed we need to rotate team a bit.
Yeah tomorrow Coq is going to be all over the place 🙂
Second group game in CL, at home, and after bagging 3 points from the first game, one injury or two won’t scare me.
If we can’t handle this, then what hope should we have for an excelent season?
I’m more worried about the West Ham game at the weekend when some bones will likely be shattered. Hope we’ll be clever enough.
Coq will come good tomorrow night!
Coq can do the job. I’m really excited that Gnabry is included in the squad. I’d love to see him get some time on the pitch!
Coq will face a stiff test tomorrow night!
Le Coq!
When do we play those tottenham cunts?, I’m sure le coq will fit right in!
Guaranteed we’ll make hard work of it…
I would like to see cazorla rested in this match.
Wenger’s team selection is troubling sometimes.. its like when you get a new album and you thrash it to within an inch of it’s life.. he does that with players from time to time (cesc, rvp last year, jack etc etc). I worry he’s going to overplay him when Arshavin could ably deputise.
I like the Ox in the middle, moving Santi back to where Diaby’s been playing and the Coq in back. Santi’s experience would make me feel better about the midfield playing cohesively.
[…] terms of team news tonight there’s a real doubt over Mikel Arteta who has an ankle problem and will face a late fitness test. If there’s any doubt about him we […]
Don’t risk him and play coq
Coq is always strong and ready for action, I say we rest Arteta and coq those cunts from Greece!