Mikel Arteta reveals new Bukayo Saka injury blow after surgery

Bukayo Saka injured his hamstring in Arsenal’s win over Crystal Palace earlier this month (Shutterstock)

Mikel Arteta has revealed that Bukayo Saka will miss more than two months after undergoing surgery on his hamstring injury.

Saka was forced off during the first half of Arsenal’s 5-1 win against Crystal Palace on December 21 and subsequently missed his side’s 1-0 victory at home to Ipswich Town on Friday evening.

Arteta initially ruled Saka out for ‘many weeks’ but the Arsenal manager has now said that he does not expect the winger to return until March at the earliest.

‘I would prefer to leave that with the doctor or himself but he had a procedure, everything went well but unfortunately he will be out for many, many weeks,’ Arteta said after Arsenal’s 1-0 win over Ipswich on Friday night.

Asked for a more definitive timeline on Saka’s return, Arteta replied: ‘I said many weeks so I think it will be more than two months.

‘I don’t know exactly how much longer, it depends on how the scar tissue starts to heal, the first week or so, mobility of that, let’s see, very difficult to say.’

Arteta also reiterated that he is not expecting an individual to single-handedly replace Saka’s attacking output.

‘It’s always important because as well with Bukayo it doesn’t mean that we’re going to score three or four goals every game,’ Arteta said.

‘We have to rely on the team, that’s the biggest strength of us, we never rely on individuals scoring 25, 30 goals and we’ve managed to be very, very competitive still and we’re going to manage to do that.

‘As I said, I think the replacement of B [Saka] is going to be the team. That unit in particular, having minutes together and asking different things, there were moments that flowed really well, there were moments where we can still have some work to do there and improve it and adapt to the qualities of the individuals. I’m certain we’re going to do that.’

Arteta, meanwhile, was more upbeat on Raheem Sterling, who is sidelined with a knee problem.

‘The news with Raz I think is better,’ Arteta said.

‘We have to see this week how he evolves but we expected the knee injury to probably take longer than actually the way the knee’s evolving in the last few days.

‘Hopefully that’s good because we need him.’

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