Mikel Arteta says Bukayo Saka hasn’t trained since Monday’s draw with Crystal Palace.
The England international was on the receiving end of a reckless kick by James McArthur in Monday night’s 2-2 draw with Crystal Palace and had to be substituted at half time.
Speaking in his pre-game press conference, the boss confirmed that he has two to three players struggling with issues ahead of Friday’s game with Aston Villa and that he’ll know more about availability after today’s training session.
He wouldn’t be drawn on who else were doubts.
The only other confirmed injury is Granit Xhaka who is in the early stages of his rehabilitation following the knee ligament damage sustained in the north London derby.
not much of an update, but I think we all know he will be on the bench at most tomorrow
I hope so, he needs to recover properly, he’s been taking a lot of kicks lately and I’d like to see him given time to come back strong.
There are injuries and injuries.
This injury was a result of an assault.
McArtur should be punished for violent contact even retrospectively.
Our poor form doesn’t mean we have to tolerate this kind of blatant violence.
I genuinely don’t get it. Yes we were poor, but even the best teams need sensible refereeing sometimes to get a win. What happened to Saka was atrocious. No way Xhaka gets away it. English refs are the absolute worst and it rankles my very soul. Utter rubbish.
Agree 100%. It was an MMA style assault.
But to be clear, it was funny when Lauren kicked Ronaldo up in the air all those years ago
https://youtu.be/oKohHsaADeI
A late tackle, a bookable offense. If it was Xhaka it was red.
It was funny yet it was still football. He threw his body and couldn’t stop.
The other one he can stop he has a clear view of the ball and Saka s leg and he chooses to go for flesh.
Actually I think M.Dean. and mainly the VAR team should be punished as well.
At the end of the day refering is still a job and there should be some minimum standards
I don’t use Twitter, but can someone who does use it confirm or deny whether McArthur has apologised to Saka… y’know like players often do when they *accidentally* cause an injury to an opponent? 🤔
For me, the justification for having VAR is to spot things that, although obvious from the right angle, a referee is unable to see in real time. A handball in the penalty area with the player’s arm blocked from the referee’s view is a good example. So, giving Mike Dean the benefit of the doubt (words that make me almost gag to write), it’s possible he was watching the ball and Saka’s high leg and would not have seen the McArthur’s kick. And that is exactly when VAR should–at least–tell the referee to go to the screen and judge for… Read more »
Blogs has said many times that they did ask the douche to look at it and he refused. It’s all on him.