Jurrien Timber, Oleksandr Zinchenko, Thomas Partey, Gabriel and Riccardo Calafiori weren’t spotted in Tuesday’s pre-Monaco training session.
Asked for updates on the quintet, Mikel Arteta said in his pre-match press conference: “We have to manage a lot of the players, so they’re probably not going to be fit for tomorrow and are a doubt. I still have 24 hours to make those decisions and hopefully the right ones.”
He also confirmed that youngster Josh Nichols has “been having some issues” and that “we still don’t know if he’s available or not.”
In a season riddled with injuries, Mikel spoke about how they represent opportunities for other players to deliver and how proud he is with the way the team are adapting.
“It is what it is,” he said. “At the end if we have to accept the challenge, it’s opportunities for other players to do that. In the ideal scenario, we have to be in charge to make those decisions. It’s forcing us to make it for the wrong reasons, but as well, we need to accept the reality and move forwards.
“I’m really happy with the way that we are playing, and the good thing is that it’s not conditioning the team in such a way that we have to become a different team. So, I’m very pleased with that, the way the team is adapting, the way players are making the effort to play in different positions and hopefully the ideal situation will come up very soon and we can do what we want.
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“I was hoping to improve it and it did improve, but then very quickly after the first game we started to have issues and more issues than we expected, but honestly the good news is that the team still reacts and plays in the way that we want and becomes so dominant, and we want to do that regardless of who plays and I think that belief is within the team and it’s really positive.
"We have a lot of joint injuries that are very difficult to predict. We have some through tackles for example that again are quite difficult to predict. The other one probably is overload - the amount of minutes to play. The knock-on effect of not having one or two players available means it puts more strain and minutes on somebody else. That’s not a good change because the consequences and load of all the players starts to be too high, much higher than what you want to do, but it is where we are.”
Kieran Tierney has been training with the first team recently and is in contention to have an opportunity on the pitch after returning from a loan spell at Real Sociedad.
“Yeah, he is ready and he’s training really well and he’s going to have an opportunity for sure with the way the team is looking at the moment,” Mikel said. “It’s for that reason and because he’s earned it as well with the way he’s behaved and the way he’s been with us because he’s willing to do it and when that happens you have to give opportunities to those kind of players.”
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