Saturday’s Emirates FA Cup win over Blackpool was tainted by an injury to Laurent Koscielny ahead of kick-off.
Our captain was due to start at Bloomfield Road but a back problem in the warm-up forced a late change to our teamsheet, with Carl Jenkinson coming into the side and Stephan Lichtsteiner stepping across to centre back.
Unai Emery was asked about Koscielny after the game. This is what he said:
on Laurent Koscielny…
Yes [it’s a back problem]. I hope it’s not bad. He has one week to rest and to work, thinking about the next match against West Ham. I hope he’s going to be OK for the next matches but before the match, he felt some pain in his back. We decided it was better for him to not play. At the moment, with our problems at centre back, it meant we were able to look at different players in different positions. Today that was Lichtsteiner, who played with very good commitment and concentration to help us at centre back with Sokratis.
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