Unai Emery had to do without two of his captaincy group against Newcastle.
Laurent Koscielny missed out with a bruised left foot and Granit Xhaka was absent with a tight left groin.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was also left out of the starting XI, and Unai explained why after the game.
“Aubameyang has had a temperature for two days and was doubtful to play today,” he said. “But also, he is coming for us to start on the bench and after he was good and he felt good in his 30 minutes.
“[Aaron Ramsey came off but] it's only cramp. I don’t think it’s more and I hope he will be ready for Sunday at Everton.
“We started Friday with not good news with Xhaka, because he has a small injury and he could not play today.
“Koscielny was coming with us in the group, but with some pain, and he said to us he is not ready to play the match.
“But then, we had a good response from other players because we have players with good work who decided to play for us.
“I think we are going to play a lot of matches. Next Sunday and Napoli are two very hard matches and we need some players to give them some chances, some different minutes with some different systems and some different tactical ideas in each match. We will need everybody.”
Copyright 2024 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.
