Unai Emery says he’s hopeful that Laurent Koscielny will be available for Sunday’s game against Southampton after the skipper was taken off during last night’s 3-0 win over BATE Borisov.
The 33 year old sat on the bench with an ice pack strapped to his calf, but fears that it was recurrence of his Achilles problem were played down, not least because it was the other leg causing him a problem.
Speaking afterwards, the Arsenal boss said it was a precautionary change above all else.
“I think it’s precaution and we are going to wait for tomorrow,” he said.
“But, I hope he will be okay for Sunday and for the next week. It’s muscular, it’s not a break. But it was only precaution because he was starting to feel not good.
“I think it’s only a precaution because he didn’t feel good and with the possibility that maybe if he carried on in the match, it could break.”
The win puts the Gunners into the draw for the Round of 16, but Emery is under no illusions as to how hard it is to go the distance in this tournament.
“It is very, very difficult to win this competition,” he said.
‘I have won this competition a lot of times and, for example, the last three were Man Utd, Atletico Madrid and Sevilla playing against Liverpool three years ago.
“There are a lot of teams who cannot play in the Champions League, like us, and they are fighting to find a way in this competition and for one title against big, big teams.
“For us also, I think it’s a good test and a good challenge to carry on and to find our best performances.”
He´s right, it will be difficult. For me the situation looks a bit scary. If the rumors are true, we´ll have a transfer budget of 40 mill without CL and 100 with CL. So if we miss out, we could be really on our way down. And I won´t blame Emery. City, Liverpool, Spurs, Utd and Chelsea all have better squads than we have. So if we finish 6th, it would be were we belong. Neverthless I think we have a chance for 4th. We should be 4th after sunday and only have Spuds and Udt from the big six… Read more »
Our problem is that we find it difficult to win away from the emirates not the big six. If we finish above where Emery took over that’s not bad considering we can’t spend and are not ready to. To me Emery has not done a bad Job so far.
That´s true. I can´t quite understand why Emery still plays 5:4:1 away from home. Sure, he want´s to be more cautious, but I think we are better with a 4:2:3:1 like yesterday and we haven´t won a lot with a 5:4:1. Just wanted to point out that our chances aren´t that bad on paper.
I don’t think Chelsea have a better squad than us. Besides that point; they now have a two window transfer ban and can’t sign anyone until summer of 2020.
Good I’m glad it looks like it’s only precautionary. Kos and Sokratis are our best centre back pairing in my opinion. If we stand a chance for top four we need them available for as many games as possible