Thursday was a fairly quiet day on the press conference front, with only six Premier League managers speaking in front of the media ahead of Gameweek 7.
The remaining 14 top-flight bosses will deliver their pre-match pressers on Friday and we’ll have the usual article and video round-ups tomorrow afternoon to summarise those.
Chris Wilder was the first to step up this morning and reported a near clean bill of health ahead of the visit of Liverpool, with David McGoldrick (groin) and Billy Sharp (suspended) being his only issues.
Wilder said:
They should be alright from last night [against Sunderland] because nobody made a tackle! I think everybody is absolutely fine apart from David McGoldrick, who’s very, very doubtful.
Johann Berg Gudmundsson has recovered from the calf problem that has forced him to miss Burnley’s last three league matches and is back in contention, while Dwight McNeil is expected to shake off a dead leg for the trip to Villa Park.
Sean Dyche said on Thursday:
Johann comes back into the thinking, he was physically fit last weekend but he had [just] two days training so we made a call on that one.
Drinky is back on the grass but not with us yet, he’ll have a longer period of recovery.
Dwight had a dead leg but I’m hoping and expecting that he’ll be OK.
The Burnley boss provided some positive comments on Chris Wood and Ashley Barnes, meanwhile, saying:
[Wood] and Barnesy know they have got the shirts at the minute but they know that J-Rod is training hard and training well, trying to affect games when he is coming on. Vyds has popped up lately, looking sharper.
Brighton’s injury situation worsened with the news than Shane Duffy (calf) is likely to miss a couple of weeks of action but Graham Potter revealed that two names could be back in contention this weekend, saying:
We’ve got Alireza coming back, maybe for the weekend. We’ve got another training session tomorrow. Solly [March], maybe, if not for the weekend maybe Tottenham.
Shane [Duffy] is going for a scan, so we’ll see the extent of that. Looks like it’s going to be weeks, rather than days. It’s a calf injury.
We protected Glenn [Murray] but he’s fine, he trained today. The longer-term ones, Berny [Bernardo] had a knock a few weeks ago. It’s just irritated his knee a little bit. It needs to settle down but he won’t make the weekend.
Trossard is making really good progress. Obviously the game’s a bit too soon for him at the weekend. [Maupay] is fine, he trained today.
Speaking ahead of Southampton’s trip to Spurs, Ralph Hasenhuttl confirmed that Moussa Djenepo (muscle) is out.
The Austrian said of Djenepo and the Saints’ injury list:
Only the long-time injured players like Moussa [Djenepo] are still out.
We took a few new pictures, there’s not much to say at the moment. He’s still out, it will take more time. How long, we don’t know exactly. At the moment, there is no chance to play for him.
Alex McCarthy has a little problem with his muscle, maybe if it’s too much risk to sit him on the bench, then he stays at home and we’ll take another goalkeeper.
There was little injury news to report from Spurs, with Giovani Lo Celso (hip) and Ryan Sessegnon (hamstring) their only confirmed absentees.
Mauricio Pochettino’s presser was dominated by talk of the Lilywhites’ poor form and of his future, with the Spurs head coach saying:
We are fixing problems at the moment to try to be better and get the results we can expect. Winning games. We’re not so far away. Are performances are not as bad as the feeling and atmosphere that we create. I’m sure we’ll start winning games and performing well. We only need time to find the solution. We trying to find the solution.
I expect more. To feel comfortable to play, to have freedom to play, freedom to make mistakes. I want to see them translate the same energy as when we played Palace. And of course, I hope that we can create a good atmosphere during the game to help the team to achieve what we want, which is the three points.
Quique Sanchez Flores has Craig Cathcart (thigh) available again and provided a positive update on the Watford injury front, saying:
Troy Deeney is out of the squad. The other players, they are ready.
Asked specifically about Danny Welbeck, Sanchez Flores said:
He’s involved in the squad. We are taking care of him, we know he didn’t play too much in the other weeks before but now the most important thing is his strong mentality, he wants to play, he wants to be involved.
While we await fresh updates from the other 14 Premier League bosses tomorrow, we do know that Hector Bellerin, Kieran Tierney, Rob Holding, Paul Pogba, Mason Greenwood, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Reece James, Naby Keita, Arnaut Danjuma, Lloyd Kelly and Simon Francis all returned from injury or illness for their respective clubs in the EFL Cup in midweek.
Speaking ahead of the Rochdale match on Wednesday, meanwhile, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer said of Marcus Rashford (groin):
He’s recovering. He’s not very, very bad, so we hope to see him before the international break.
Leicester assistant manager Chris Davies said of James Maddison (ankle) on Tuesday:
Madders, he got a knock on his ankle. He looks a doubt for the weekend. We’ll see how he goes and how he recovers next week.
Predicted line-ups and more detailed information can be found in the Team News tab, which is being refreshed over the coming 24 hours.
Lessons learned from Gameweek 6:
- Southampton 1-3 Bournemouth
- Leicester City 2-1 Tottenham Hotspur
- Burnley 2-0 Norwich City
- Everton 0-2 Sheffield United
- Manchester City 8-0 Watford
- Newcastle United 0-0 Brighton and Hove Albion
- Crystal Palace 1-1 Wolverhampton Wanderers
- West Ham United 2-0 Manchester United
- Arsenal 3-2 Aston Villa
- Chelsea 1-2 Liverpool
