Mikel Arteta seems to think Thomas Partey will sit out the final five weeks of the season due to the injury he sustained at Crystal Palace earlier this month.
The Ghanaian limped off with a thigh issue and while the club were reticent to rule him out completely, the latest update on the player’s fitness is not positive.
“The news that we got after having another assessment, they are not great,” he said ahead of Saturday’s match with Southampton.
“It’s not looking very positive his availability this season. We’ll have to wait and see, he’s trying to get back as quickly as possible but at the moment, we are not very optimistic about it.”
On Partey’s injury being a serious blow given Kieran Tierney has already been ruled out, Arteta continued:
“Yes, at the moment it’s not ideal. We knew that towards the end of the season, one of the key elements was to have the team available and the squad available as much as possible.
We have a few issues, as well with [Takehiro] Tomiyasu but we need to continue to compete and work the best possible way.”
While rumours have circulated that Alex Lacazette might not be fit for the trip to Saint Mary’s, the boss hinted that the Frenchman, who wasn’t spotted in this week’s training footage, should be fit.
Pressed on the striker’s absence, Arteta said: “Obviously, there are private reasons that I cannot comment on but I have no other team news to give apart from the guys we have discussed.”
Asked a second time about Laczazette, he revealed: “We will see if he’s available, there’s a good possibility that that’s the case.”
Already down to the bare bones, Arsenal will be desperate to avoid further fitness blows if we’re to maintain a push for the top four.
“We try to do the best that we can,” said Arteta when asked if special measures were in place at this time of the season.
“Monitor the players, give them the right training sessions and we haven’t had a lot of injuries this season.
“We have some important injuries now to very important players in a crucial moment of the season and we want to try and avoid that, and if possible get them back as quick as possible.”
So bad news on all fronts then.
You know, this top 4 push was always going to come down to injuries. Not making excuses for Arteta but if you’d asked me which player could we absolutely not live without, I’d have said Partey. If Sp*rs lose Kane it’s the same deal. Yes we can go back and bemoan January but could we ever have signed a player that could do what Thomas Partey does for this side? I highly doubt it. It’s one of those things unfortunately. We all saw how quickly Liverpool capitulated without Van Dyke. Some teams just have that player they can’t function coherently… Read more »
Top four isn’t gone yet.
A lot can still happen.
Hot Take Time Machine.
I dunno about that. I think most sensible people were aware we were dancing with the devil as regards injuries. Even Pep said City are in trouble after a couple of bad ones. And our squad is so much smaller. Yes, I’m sure we could’ve fucked up in many other ways. We are Arsenal after all. And we can’t really equate the dismal performance against Palace to Partey as he was on the field for most of it. But if I’d said two weeks ago to the people who had us odds on to make top 4 that we’d have… Read more »
Eminently Sensible Wistful Retrospective, then?
Agree completely about Partey–not necessarily our best player (Saka, and maybe Odegaard, I think) but certainly the most irreplaceable. His absence means that Odegaard is much less effective, that Gabriel and White are forced to hold the ball much longer, that Xkaka (if not forced to play left back) is positioned further back so that interchanges with the left wing, left back, and false 9 are much more difficult. It completely changes the waywe play.
We need to win this otherwise the Mirror will go into overdrive with anti Rwanda propaganda
I mean, anti Rwanda propaganda is something this club and country needs a hell of a lot more of. The idea we’re associated with a country with their human rirecord, and now Virus Johnson’s inhumanity. Yuk.
Coming from a country where Asylum seekers are shunted to a country with “gross human rights violation”, the same country that left the EU because migrants were at your doorsteps from countries you bombed in the “coalition of the willing” and some like Libya you liberated from a dictator. Remind me how the pro democracy forces you backed have handled Libya. Sorry I brought this up on an Arsenal forum but I read it on the main blog and the link to the Mirror. It’s easy to look at African politics and African democracy from the top without opening the… Read more »
Jeez mate, you might want to learn a little about the global legacy of English colonialism a little bit…
Big blow about Thomas, but not surprising after what we were hearing.
The race must go on
Certainly don’t want any more injuries but happy if Laca sits this one out and we give one of the three other options (Pepe, Eddie, Martinelli) a shot up top.
Laca playing invites failure.
If he plays on Saturday and we drop more points I will be livid with the manager.
I could be wrong, but it sounds to me that Arteta is saying (in “protect privacy” mode) that Lacazette is not injured at all but that he had a family or other personal issue that prevented training.
Not a stretch at all to believe he might feel like crap after this week of discussion about him.
Did he manage to fall out with Lacazette too then?
His man management is a joke. Can’t handle any player with the slightest sign of an ego or personality even. Watch Guendouzi become world class under other managers.
Oh behave, half-man, half-armchair.
As for Guendouzi, we’re out of popcorn. Nothing to see there, but the guy who classlessly baited opposition players with non-Arsenal bullshit about his earning power
You mean the player who had just injured our goalkeeper?
I’ve spent many a sleepless night crying over how classless trying to insult him was.
Speaking of classless, what Xhaka did was far, far worse, and he’s been forgiven fully.
The truth is, this is purely an Arteta litmus test. If you fully support him, you’ll think Xhaka did nothing wrong while Guendouzi and Auba were toxic and unmanageable – even though better managers seem to have done just fine.
Why was what what Xhaka did worse than than Guendouzi. Toxic so called fans verbally abused Xhaka and even worse his little girl. The response he made was totally understandable.
Not the same people. In the moment, Xhaka was responding to matchgoing fans in the stadium ironically clapping his substitution after a poor performance. He also threw the captain’s armband on the ground. He was also older and the captain of the team. He didn’t blow up at abuse, he blew up at criticism. Guendouzi gave some lip to the same guy who had injured his teammate, because he had injured his teammate. Oh, and he managed not to disrespect the fans or any symbols of the club. And he was 20 at the time and not the captain. See… Read more »
They were not unmanageable, but what they brought to the team was not worth the downside. Auba’s switch is best for all concerned and our run of form was purely off the back of him leaving, and he managed to get firing again for Barca too. Guendouzi on the other hand has had problems with practically every manager he has come across, and he is no where near good enough to be worth that level of disruption. Leave off it with your strawman bullshit. Supporting for the team’s current manager, whether you like it or not, isn’t some sort of… Read more »
It’s not a strawman. Have you not noticed how the same people change their opinions about a player or manager after one or two good or bad games? With Guendouzi and Auba, it was very much an article of faith – if you were on board with the manager, you considered the players “not worth it.” Of course, the same could be said about Xhaka, Lacazette – and previously about Luiz. You might argue Xhaka has improved – Guendouzi might have too, he’s certainly playing well now and we could definitely use someone with his skillset. As for Auba –… Read more »
The internet has become a place to make an assumption and then comment and react on that assumption as if it’s the truth. Sad sad sad
Partey out for the season is a big.
The prospect of Lacazette wasting another opportunity for us to get goals from the striker position is just as bad.
But, for all that, top four will only truly be gone if the remaining players throw on the towel.
Arteta has a job to ensure that, until it becomes mathematically impossible, heads don’t go down and this club fight tooth and nail for every single goal and every single point.
It ain’t over yet.
COYG
*blow
*throw in the towel
Jesus, fucking autocorrect.
When’s the last time Lacazette has been fit?
2015
1915
He’s been on a great run last few months fitness-wise. Guy runs his bollox off every time he plays yet the bs he gets from cnts on here is ridiculous. He’s always been a forward that you play off your main striker – that’s his game. His work rate and movement off the ball are superb. The peak of the Auba- Laca partnership in 2018 was sublime and showed exactly how you get the best from Laca. Now he’s suddenly the whipping boy every week because he’s not Aubamayang…if I see another fkn 3/10 rating from blogs I’ll fkn scream.
I mostly agree about his workrate, although it seems to have dropped off recently.
I actually like Laca, I just think it’s wild he’s our main striker when he can’t do 70 minutes – or score.
I would caveat your defense of Laca by the fact that the exact same cycle of being poorly used by the manager – playing poorly – becoming the fans’ whipping boy – happened earlier in the season with Aubameyang.
I agree that they worked best as a tandem. Why they were almost never used that way is beyond me.
This season reminds me of ’15 -’16 when Leicester won the league. In a bizarre way, City, Chelsea, Liverpool and United (not that bizarre, though), were off form. Many pundits tipped us to go on and win the league after a 2 -1 victory over Leicester at the Emirates put us a point above them. All Arsene needed to do was strengthen the team. A striker and a midfielder were identified as the least we should do. Arsene did none! Everything went south later that season and we finished 2nd, an embarrassing 10 points behind Leicester! Arteta had the chance… Read more »
I think Defoe was available then.
I think the saddest thing about this season is that straight after most of the fanbase were united around the team and Arteta after that hugely promising performance against City (and we were going under the radar turning in some fantastic performances leading up to that match too), we basically never saw that line-up again, and some spirited performances aside, just haven’t reached that level since. Partey went to the AFCON immediately after, then once he returned Tomiyasu had already been out for a couple of weeks and never made his comeback. Then just for lols, the injury gods put… Read more »