There was good news, good news and more good news when Arsene Wenger ran through the latest fitness updates ahead of the Southampton game.
Suspension, international duty and injury has deprived us of three midfielders, but otherwise we’re looking strong:
on team news…
We have Theo Walcott back in the squad and of course we lose Granit Xhaka because he will be suspended. Mohamed Elneny is at the Africa Cup of Nations and that’s it. The good news is that Per Mertesacker and Mathieu Debuchy are back in full training from Friday, so the squad is quite big, but we are a bit short in midfield at the moment.
on Santi being the only player not in full training…
Not Santi, no.
on whether he’ll rest players on Saturday…
We’ll put out a team with first-team experience. Maybe there will be one or two younger players, but no more. Overall, it’s the squad that will play. I have not yet completely decided who will play and who will not play. It’s a first-team squad that will be involved.
More polls coming soon!
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.