Mikel Arteta has confirmed Arsenal suffered two ‘very unfortunate’ injury blows in their warm-down following the Premier League win over Leeds United.
Reigning Premier League champions Arsenal came from behind to beat Leeds 2-1 at the Emirates Stadium on Saturday.
Leeds led through James Justin’s 55th-minute opener but Arsenal mounted an impressive comeback, scoring two goals in eight minutes through Riccardo Calafiori and summer signing Bruno Guimaraes.
Piero Hincapie and Martin Zubimendi both took part in an Arsenal training session after the game to help with their ‘recovery’ and ‘rhythm’.
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But both suffered injury setbacks during the warm-down and will not be available for at least Tuesday’s Champions League game against Lille.
‘We had a training session planned for after the game for players that did not have enough minutes to get some recovery and rhythm,’ Arteta said in his pre-match press conference.
‘In two very unfortunate actions we lost two players. Not great. We need to assess them today and have further scans to see where they are then we will have a timeframe on how long they are going to be out for.
‘It’s far from ideal.’
Arteta confirmed Zubimendi and Hincapie, who had to be carried off by his teammates, both suffered ankle injuries.
In better news for the Gunners, Arteta revealed William Saliba has been back on the grass taking part in individual training sessions following the injury he suffered during the World Cup.
‘It’s been over a week, I think,’ Arteta said.’ He’s managing his load and building his capacity back up.
‘In the next few weeks hopefully we can introduce him to team training.’
Arsenal suffered a shock 3-0 defeat to Brighton before the international break but responded with a much-needed win over Leeds.
‘There were many positives from the game,’ Arteta said. ‘Obviously the way we reacted we managed to turn around the game in a really difficult context.
‘So overall, especially after the [international] break, I am really happy with the result. We’re playing pretty well.
‘I think the way we have finished the actions is probably something we need to improve, but in terms of what we produced before the international break it was better than any other year.
‘Then we had obviously the Brighton game, then the other game [against Leeds] which was a different context as well. But we are getting in good positions and we just need to be more clinical now to finish more actions.
‘We have to be emotionally dominant regardless of what the context is, which is easy to say but actually very difficult to do.
‘We did it in the majority of the matches, which is great. We didn’t do it in Brighton and we paid the penalty of that.’
Arsenal beat Napoli 1-0 in their Champions League opener, while Lille began their European campaign with a 3-2 defeat against Real Betis.
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