Laurent Koscielny has confirmed that he’s recovered from a small back issue that kept him out of Wednesday’s friendly match with Bayern Munich and should be available for tomorrow’s game against Chelsea in Beijing.
Speaking to ahead of the showdown with Antonio Conte’s reigning Premier League champions, the France international urged his team mates to focus on securing another confidence boosting victory.
“My back is better,” he told a press conference on Friday morning.
“I had a little pain on Tuesday morning. I’ve done treatment for two days and today I trained and was okay. Not 100 per cent but I’m okay for playing so we will see tomorrow.
“As for the team, I think last season we finished well and we’ve worked well during this [pre-season] tournament in Australia and China.
“We work well physically, technically and tactically and we have some friendly games to show what we learnt during our sessions.
“The games are for this and we want to win because it gives you confidence you need to play with freedom.
“I hope all the players focus on our new season and we need to play and win our first game [against Leicester].”
Arsene Wenger also gave an update on the status of the rest of the squad revealing: “Theo Walcott might not play tomorrow. Today we had 21 players fit, Theo Walcott was not ready but it’s nothing major.”
On the match itself, he added: “It’s a friendly between Chelsea and Arsenal and that means it’s not really friendly, there’s always some pride at stake and some London desire to have superiority.
“It was a very interesting game against Chelsea in the FA Cup final, we play against them in the Charity [Community] Shield and we play them very early in the season again. In fact, we know each other very well.
“It’s difficult to know how prepared is Chelsea and how far we are with our preparation. Tomorrow will be a good indication, it was good against Bayern. It’s another test for us before the season.”
Great new on Kos.
if he can make it the whole of next season that gives a us major boost.
He is the bos.
Not being pedantic but isn’t it the “Boss”? 🙂
No, you’re not being pedantic 🙂 OCD much? 🙂
For a second there I thought that his Achilles was fully fit and got really excited.
Still great news though, we all love Kos the Bos
I had Achilles tendinitis when I was 12-15 years old. Very difficult to shift and is aggravated by return to high intensity sports.. I don’t think the Bos can ever get his Achilles 100% irritation free again.
no pro athlete is ever 100% fit. These guys play the whole season at 80-90%, you just never have enough time to recover.
Here’s hoping Kos is healthy all year, but we have a decent backup in Per 🙂
Imo, Kos should be rested for early games in all cups and prioritised for PL games. Back problems, hammy and many others can stem from his Achilles problem. If we want to get back into Champions league and put together a title challenge, he’s so important.
What is a “small back” guys?
Yep. Seems he had an issue with the size of his back, but he’s over it now.
Love that Wenger still calls it the Charity Shield. Just as it should be for anyone born in the 70s like me.
I won’t read too much into victories or defeats in pre-season would you? The point at this stage of pre-season is to see how individuals are coming along (particularly those on the periphery) When we get to the Emirates cup, the concentration will be more on how the team/tactics are coming together. At the moment we are missing a massive chunk of the defense – Mustafi, Holding, Chambers. Koscielny has hardly been played. Instead secondary options (If not tertiary) have been employed. We are talking about Elneny, Maitland Niles, an ill Per. What is important to take note of his… Read more »