Mikel Arteta faces an anxious Arsenal injury wait on Gabriel Magalhaes and Riccardo Calafiori ahead of the Premier League clash against Fulham. Both defenders have not trained since before last weekend's win over West Ham and therefore are huge doubts.
The Gunners have been significantly hampered by injuries this season with Martin Odegaard, Bukayo Saka and Jurrien Timber all missing some action over the last few months. Those problems have lessened in recent weeks and, with that, Arsenal's form has drastically improved.
Wednesday's victory over Manchester United was the Gunners' fourth on the trot in all competitions and another three points could take them closer to league leaders Liverpool. Arne Slot's side kick off the weekend's action with a Merseyside derby away at Everton.
While Jakub Kiwior and Oleksandr Zinchenko - in the absence of Gabriel and Calafiori - helped Arsenal win earlier this week, Arteta will be keen to have the latter duo back available. With that in mind, the Gunners manager was asked for the injury latest.
"We have a few," he said. "It's matchday minus 2 so we have to modify a few players. Until tomorrow's training session, it's very difficult to say. We have another training session tomorrow - so will then see how everyone is."
Asked if the issues were potentially long-term, he said: "Depends how they evolve in the next few days."
With the Fulham clash not until Sunday, Calafiori and Gabriel seemingly have just one session to prove their fitness. As for guaranteed injury absentees, Ben White and Takehiro Tomiyasu have already been ruled out, with Arteta not expecting either back for some time.
"Ben is going to be out for months," Arteta admitted in late November. "We had to make a decision in the last few weeks, unfortunately. It got to a point where we had to protect the player, and we decided to do the surgery." On Tomiyasu, who has played just a few minutes this season, Arteta said: "Tomiyasu is going to be out for a bit.
"He's going away for a few weeks to change his environment because it's been really tough for him. We're going to give him the best opportunity to try and unlock something, but I think we need to be patient." As for Fulham, Reiss Nelson is ineligible to face his parent club with Harrison Reed and Joachim Andersen likely to miss out due to injury.
Sasa Lukic will be back available after serving a one-match ban against Brighton due to an accumulation of yellow cards. Tom Cairney, however, will remain unavailable as he serves a three-match ban - after being shown a straight red card against Tottenham last weekend.