Bukayo Saka and Jurrien Timber could be back from injury as Arsenal host Shakhtar Donetsk in the Champions League on Tuesday night.
Saka was substituted with a muscular issue in England’s 2-1 defeat to Greece during the international break and was not involved at all as Arsenal suffered a first defeat of the season at Bournemouth on Saturday. Timber also missed out, having missed out on the Netherlands’ international games and the Arsenal win over Southampton at the start of October.
Speaking to the media in Monday’s pre-match press conference, Arteta revealed Saka could return to action for the Gunners’ third game of the Champions League league phase, though captain Martin Odegaard will not feature.
“They are closer and both progressing really well,” Arteta told reporters.
“Martin is still not fit. With Bukayo, let’s see how he feels with the training sessions we have today.”
The same applies to Timber, though the manager said he is yet to join in with a full training session.
“I think it’s going to be close. Obviously we have to see how he deals with training with the whole group because he hasn’t done that yet. He will be pretty close hopefully.”
Arteta also said Timber’s issue was “muscular” and not to do with his knee, an obvious concern for fans after he missed almost the entirety of last season after rupturing his ACL.
The Arsenal boss was more reserved on whether or not there could be a first Champions League start for Ethan Nwaneri after another bright substitute appearance at the weekend. Nwaneri’s only Arsenal start to date saw him score a brace against Bolton in the League Cup back in September.
“I think it’s identifying the moment, understanding where he is, where the team is, and what is the optimal moment to throw a player into that context,” Arteta said.
“He’s already done a lot in a short period of time, so let’s take it step by step and make sure those steps are consistennt and can allow him to grow in the manner and the form we want in the team.”
With Odegaard missing out and Saka still not guaranteed to be fit, Arteta will have to consider how to get more creativity into the team than was on show against Bournemouth even before William Saliba’s red card.
“what is the optimal moment to throw a player into that context”
Right, but throwing Nwaneri on at 2-0 down is somehow optimal?
Complete waffler. Not seen another manager be as reluctant as he is to play young players before, certainly not at Arsenal.
This is such a boring narrative.
We all want to see Nwaneri blossom into the ballon d’or winner.
I want to see arsenal win some shit first though.
Agreed although I believe Ethan has been well managed so far this season.
Those 2 things aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive though.
I do understand it’s a difficult decision to take as there are lots of implications for the team, manager and player but at some point you have to be brave and take a chance.
100%. Rice/Merino/Partey is not a midfield you should be playing v Bournemouth. Ethan should have started & I think if he had, it would have definitely increased our chances of winning the game.
This has been a huge talking point – why play that midfield in that game? My bet is that Arteta might want be able to use that as our “strong man” look for closing out games or – say – going to Anfield. So he wanted to get those players on the pitch in a lower pressure situation. They were essentially training against Bournemouth until the stupid thing happened. I was pretty interested in watching Merino and White and less so Stirling figure out their roles. This stuff might not be the most exciting at every moment of the season… Read more »
I thought it made sense given Bournemouth pressing intensity. Think the idea was to dominate the midfield hence the slow start of the game but the whole plan collapsed. Maybe Mikel should have try Ethan sooner but we’ll never know !
Exactly this! I have defended Mikel Arteta on SM for weeks now with folks pointing out his reluctance to play the Youth. I have always argued that I liked how he was slowly integrating Nwaneri into the fold. But Saturday was different. Martinelli not starting (understandable, given his injury scare + travel time for Brazil) so we push Trossard to the left… No Saka, so Sterling start. It means there had to be someone behind ’em to be the creative spark. I just couldn’t defend starting a midfield of Merino — Part-ey — and Rice in THOSE circumstances. Mikel should… Read more »
To start Nwaneri we’d have to bench one or Partey, Merino or Rice?
I just don’t see a scenario where dropping one of those players makes any logical sense.
I’m happy to be convinced though.
Not every game is the same. Would I pick Nwaneri ahead of any of those v Liverpool ? No chance. Against Bournemouth, with no Odegaard & no Saka & much less final third creativity than we noramlly have ? Absolutely.
Except in the game before pool to give them some reps together. He may have planned to change it after 60 mins if it was all smooth sailing.
I think that’s a bit of a stretch tocbe honest. First priority: pick the team to give you the best chance of it being plain sailing.
I do fear we are getting to the point where people will tie themselves up in knots defending Mikel. He’s been brilliant, but come on he isn’t perfect. Whatever the reasons, he got it wrong.
Feels like 80% of people watch football only seeing what a player does on the ball, completely failing to realise what they do the rest of the time is just as crucial if not more to winning. Nwaneri seems like a brilliant kid but his grasp of tactics at his age and experience, recognising what’s going on on the pitch and everything Arteta asks of his midfielders simply can’t be anywhere near as complete as a senior player. His role is just as much to cover the back 4 and press effectively without leaving dangerous holes as it is to… Read more »
And that isn’t a knock on him at all. Today’s game and what managers like Arteta and Guardiola ask of players is about 20 times more complex than what Wenger did, it would be unreasonable to ask any 17 year old to have that internalised and as instinctive as it needs to be to function properly.
You talk of on field experience. That comes with actually playing and being trusted to make mistakes. It’s all a matter of risk-reward because even the senior players are still very much making those same mistakes, so why not offer a youngster or anyone else with a higher upside that chance as well. At least, that way, you’ve a slightly higher chance of getting a better result. Guardiola (whom you’ve referenced) even with the big squad he has periodically trusts youngsters to start and play in EPL games. The same can’t be said about Arteta who doesn’t even give youngsters… Read more »
It’s a matter of when and how much. If you make one or two mistakes, as Nwaneri is likely to do in a 10 minute cameo, then you can learn from it. If you start and play 90 minutes and probably make about 8 different mistakes then it’s much harder for it to become a useful learning experience rather than overwhelming. “Youngsters” can mean a large range of things, Arteta has played 20 and 21-year olds quite a lot, but how many times has Guardiola let a 17 year old start a Premier League game? The game against Bournemouth might… Read more »
I certainly wasn’t referring to the Bournemouth game as a “dead rubber” game.
From what I’ve seen of Ethan he is 90% there with the off ball stuff. That other 10% matters but I don’t think that’s why he’s not picking him in these games. I also wanted to see him on earlier. My belief is that MA desperately wants to avoid “anointing” Ethan as our “savior.” He knows how quickly the winds of change can turn against a player and how this game can invade a player’s life. Right now he’s the shiny new thing and we all want to love him and see him play, but lots of players have been… Read more »
That’s interesting, I trust your analsys of the off ball stuff more than anyone here, including myself, but do you think you’re seeing everything Arteta is seeing and asking for? Because I wouldn’t pretend to know half of it, I feel like I know just enough to know how much I don’t know, and I know you study this stuff a lot more and know a lot more, but do you really feel like you have a firm grasp of all the reads Odegaard for example is asked to make on the pitch, how he’s asked to respond to each… Read more »
You think 80% of people watch football like that ? That is a wild statement 😀
other than with defenders/defensive players, yes. Most people look at or value what midfielders and attacking players do off the ball nearly as much as their passing, dribbling and goal contributions. And I really don’t think it’s such a wild or controversial statement either, it’s even somewhat understandable given that stuff has only fairly recently (last decade or two) become as crucial in top tier football. Bergkamp wasn’t asked to do this stuff, nor was Henry (at least until he got to Barca) and many fans grew up in that era, and even younger ones are learning about football from… Read more »
on 2-0 one man down, the thinking was, “what’s the worst that can happen”, and EN gained valuable experience
Be brave Mikel, like Ethan.
Put Trossard on the bench, he’s a better player coming on with 20/30 minutes to go and trying his magic in the final third. Not a starter for me and this isn’t based on his horrendous pass which cost us so dearly Saturday. Play martinelli left, Saka or Sterling right and an absolute starter for me is Nwaneri. He must start. The lack of creativity on Saturday was so evident before the sending off.
Let’s rest Bukayo and Jurrien for this one.
Hope Zinny can start, will be quite special for him. Think Ethan deserve to start as well !
Agree (on resting Jurrien and Saka for this one to be unleashed on Sunday.)
Would rest Gabriel too and give Kiwior a shot alongside Saliba (since he will be sitting out Sunday.) Gabriel has played a lot for club and country recently.
Even in the absence of Saka, this is very winnable.
Shaktar are no dummies and Big Gabi runs our defence, there’s no way he should be dropped for this one. We need to be targeting a top eight finish.
I would agree with Henkamp because Saliba will want to do better (he was terrible against Belgium few days ago so).
I think we’ll go something like this:
Raya
White Saliba Kiwior Zinny
Jorginho Rice Nwaneri
Sterling Jesus Martinelli
Saturday’s game showed yet again just how important that Saka be is to the team. Without him we looked utterly toothless.
Arteta got the selection badly wrong against Bournemouth and must learn from his errors. With the absence of Odegaard Arteta must be prepared to take a gamble on Nwaneri: we need that creativity in the middle.
BTW: isn’t it really annoying that we’ve lost our two best players to injuries playing international football? I’ll say it again: all international football should be played during the off season in the summer.
Agree 100%
What was even sadder about his absence was that ALL our corner kicks came from the side where we would have him crossing! That hurt our chances of scoring from those badly. And in a game like that, with a man down, set pieces become doubly important.
Really interesting weekend when it came to refereeing and particularly VAR. On Saturday the VAR decided to get involved with the SUBJECTIVE decision of the on-field official and pressurise him to send off Saliba. But on Sunday during the Liverpool v Chelsea game exactly the same type of foul was left to the discretion of the man in the middle, who again decided that a yellow card was enough. Then, during the Wolves v City game, the VAR tried to cancel out a perfectly good goal at the end. Fortunately for City, the on-field referee was strong enough to tell… Read more »
Exactly the opposite happened for the city goal – on field linesman flagged it offside – VAR had the ref go to the monitor to see that whomever that little twit is was clever enough to put the keeper off as the corner came in – but break contact and get out of the way before the header happens. Very annoying, but probably the correct call.
Good luck getting a replay of the foul at the edge of the city box before they’re able to start the string of corners that leads to the goal.
Definitely need to have Timber fit for the Liverpool match, would save him tomorrow night since we will have our starting back four from Saturday available.
Might play 15-30 minutes to get some cardio but think white was well rested and should be able to play this one without issues
We lost to Bournemouth because of individual errors on the ball and a red card after 30 minutes. Ethan Nwaneri should not the talking point from this game.