Despite appearing to limp down the tunnel after full-time on Wednesday, Ben White is “fine” for Arsenal’s clash with Sunderland this weekend.
“He’s fine.” – Mikel Arteta on Ben White
- READ MORE: Press conferences for Gameweek 4
Indeed, the Gunners have emerged from their clash with Napoli unscathed.
“No, no, all good.” – Mikel Arteta on if there were any new concerns from midweek
As for existing issues, William Saliba (back) remains out, but it sounds like Cristhian Mosquera (muscle) isn’t too far away.
“He is doing really well. Let’s see if he can get this game or the next one. He will be around that time, I think.” – Mikel Arteta on Cristhian Mosquera
And Jurrien Timber (groin) is already back in training, with a return to action seemingly imminent for him, too.
“Let’s see, we have another training session. He has been doing really well. He has been training with us now for a few days, and he looks in a good shape.” – Mikel Arteta on when we can expect to see Jurrien Timber get minutes
Given his two right-backs’ injury records, Arteta was then asked about the challenges of trying to keep Timber and White both fit at the same time, in order to manage minutes more.
“Yeah, that was one of the challenges last year, especially when we had two or three injuries within the same line, sometimes in the same position as well. So, hopefully, this season, we’ll have a bit more luck and we can manage that better. If we manage that better, probably the likelihood of them getting injuries is going to be lower.
“With Jurrien, the last three seasons as well, we had the ACL. It was a long-term injury that has consequences afterwards. Then Ben was out and you start to load a player. For five weeks in our schedule, he needs to play 15 games in that period. The probability of something happening, it is bigger. And yeah, the full-back position nowadays does have some huge physical demands.” – Mikel Arteta on keeping his right-backs fit
There was praise for Ezri Konsa, meanwhile, after a solid start to his Gunners career.
“After talking to a lot of people who have worked with him, whether staff members or players, I already had a sense from the way everybody was talking about him that he is a person who is great at gathering people together. He has a real personality and a lot of leadership skills. You saw the first day he trained, the way he was talking and the way he was presenting himself. It was very impressive, and so far, he’s done a really good job.
“Obviously, we had Wilo out and Jurrien out for long periods, and then we had the issue with Mosquera, so we were really, really thin at the back. We needed to put a good player in that position, especially with the expectations that we have and the amount of minutes that they are going to have to try to play. We’ve done it and so far it’s working well.” – Mikel Arteta on Ezri Konsa
