Declan Rice, Leandro Trossard and Gabriel Magalhaes all took part in this afternoon’s open training session at London Colney before Arsenal flew to Lisbon ahead of tomorrow night’s Champions League quarter-final first leg against Sporting.
Eberechi Eze, Bukayo Saka, Piero Hincapie and Jurrien Timber were not involved in front of the cameras, which suggests they are unlikely to make the trip.
Rice and Trossard both withdrew from international duty with unspecified issues and missed Saturday’s FA Cup defeat to Southampton.
Gabriel featured at St Mary’s but failed to see out the game, coming off with a knee problem and later applying ice on the bench after being replaced by William Saliba.
Taking part in an open training session does not guarantee a player is fully fit. Trossard, for example, trained ahead of the trip to Bayer Leverkusen in the previous round but did not travel.
Saka’s continued absence is a blow, although Mikel Arteta will have taken some encouragement from the performance of 16-year-old Max Dowman, who was comfortably Arsenal’s standout player at the weekend.
We’ll hear from the manager later this evening.