Mikel Arteta met the press this morning ahead of our trip to Nottingham Forest tomorrow evening.
As ever, he was asked about injuries and player availability, and hinted that there might be an addition to the squad from the players who have been absent.
When asked about Riccardo Calafiori, Cristhian Mosquera, Piero Hincapie, and Max Dowman who have all out to varying degrees, the Arsenal boss said there ‘might’ be a chance for one of them.
On who it might be, he said “I can’t tell you because I don’t know! So I need to meet now the medical staff, we have a training session now and see if somebody is available for the weekend.”
So, a classic non-update update with a sort-of update but nothing that we can be definitive about. Fingers crossed though, because a defensive addition would be very useful at this point.
The trip to the City Ground is the third of four consecutive away games, and Arteta was quizzed on whether he plans in advance when it comes to team selections.
“Well, in certain things, yes,” he said. “Especially looking at the opponents and the things that we’re going to be able to train or we can replicate in those games.
“Sometimes ideally we want to plan, OK, for this game we think this player could be better, and then [take into account] the load.
“But some of the times it’s just impossible and you have to go game by game.
“We have more players back now. We have better options. And that’s very helpful because obviously we’ve been giving game time to almost every player.”