Mikel Arteta insists the injury that continues to sideline Gabriel Jesus is minor but he won’t take any further unnecessary risks.
Despite sporting heavy strapping on his right knee, the Brazil international produced a man-of-the-match performance in the 2-1 win over Nottingham Forest at the tail-end of last month but has since missed four matches in a row.
After his appearance at the City Ground, the striker revealed he’d pushed to feature despite having fluid on his knee – the same one that required surgery in December 2022 – after taking a kick in training.
Time will tell whether the decision to let Jesus play was worth it or not. For now, Arteta is playing a waiting game.
“We couldn’t resolve that as quickly as we wanted and he had a small reaction in training again,” Arteta revealed ahead of Saturday’s clash with Newcastle.
“We didn’t want to take any more risks because he’s been out for quite a while and he’s a player that we need at his best and we decided to give him a few more days.”
Jesus has eight goals and five assists in 23 appearances across all competitions this season.
When is the last time we scored a goal from a cross?
We are to predictable at playing through the middle…swap saka and martinelli positions and put kai up top and rice, odegard, trossard/jorginho in behind.
Where and when did you do your coaching badges? Which club have you ever coached and what did you achieve with them?
Yes, so predictable that we only managed to score eleven goals in our last two league matches. Dreadful.
It *was* predictable. West Ham and Burnley knew that we would score. I’m guessing that Newcastle know it too.
It was the fourth goal against Burnley, so 25 minutes ago in premier league time, or a frustrating 7 days in the real world.
Are you for real mate. Hahaha
I realise this post was about Jesus but the cross came out of nowhere. Crucify the team with the second best attack in the league between city and Liverpool
So the rest of the season then…😭
Yeah, if it’s on the same knee he had surgery on, and very similar to ‘minor’ setback he’s already had this season, then it’s not minor. Will keep saying it until I’m blue in the face- love them, but we *have* to keep building this squad to remove our reliance on on the likes of Jesus, Partey, Tomi and Zinchenko. If we end up falling short of our aims again this season because of losing key players at the crunch momemts (which would be three seasons in a row), then we’ll all be pulling our hair out.
It will be the same story with Jesus next season too. Brilliant player, but lots of injuries. We need a solid CF next season who can play 40-50 games. Looks like we have started to pull the bandaid with Tierney, we should do the same with Partey and Jesus.
We need Jesus