Mikel Arteta addressed managing squad depth ahead of a trip to Slavia Praha for Arsenal.
The Gunners are missing Martin Zubimendi, who is now injured, through an accumulation of yellow cards and Viktor Gyökeres due to an injury that forced him off at half time against Burnley.
They now have seven significant absences from the squad, and any more injuries will be a big issue for the manager, who will be hoping the team get to the international break without more bad news.
“That's a situation that we've been dealing with for a few weeks and trying to have the right freshness, the right cohesion within the team. The team has been competing well in all different competitions and tomorrow we know we have a really tough match here, they are unbeaten here at home all season.
“It's a team that are very used to playing together; they have a very clear philosophy, they create a massive atmosphere as well, so we know it's going to be a really tough match.
*“Well, we looked at everything, obviously we have four knee [injuries], with Gabriel Jesus, Kai Havertz, Noni Madueke and Martin Odegaard which is very, very unusual all of them with long term and then we have some muscular injuries with other players which can happen, and every club has. I think it's very unusual to have that many players in the frontline with issues.*
“We have to face it, we've been facing it in a brilliant way and we'll continue like this.
“We have seven players out, so I don't know what depth we're talking about now because we're missing a lot of players, a lot of front players, so if we continue to do that every three days, we won't be respecting what we discussed earlier, which, in our opinion, is the most important part.”