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Arsenal Name Official 24-Man Squad For Pre-Season Tour Of Far East

By on July 11, 2013

Arsenal have announced a 24-man squad that will fly out to Jakarta for the first leg of our pre-season tour of the Far East today.

The main absentee, as we reported on Tuesday, is captain Thomas Vermaelen who has been forced to miss the tour after picking up a back injury while away on international duty with Belgium last month. The defender will now stay back in London to receive treatment and is a doubt to be fit in time for the start of the season.

The other exclusion which has raised a few eyebrows is Gervinho, who’s been left out because of ‘sickness’ amid rumours he’s in talks with Roma about a switch to Italy this summer. I think it’s fair to assume Gervinho could be off after being left out of the pre-season tour. ‘Sickness’ is usually a short-term thing so there is no need for him to miss a two week tour because of it, so if we read between the lines he’s stayed behind to sort out his future.

The club also confirmed on the official website that Santi Cazorla and Nacho Monreal have been given permission to sit out the tour after being given more time off following their exploits with Spain at the Confederations Cup, while new signing Yaya Sanogo is still with France at the Under-20 World Cup.

Several youngsters have been given the chance to impress with Chuba Akpom, Serge Gnabry, Kris Olsson and Gedion Zelalem all on the plane and on their way to Asia with the first team, which is due to play pre-season games in Indonesia, Vietnam and Japan.

Here’s the 24-man squad:

Mikel Arteta
Lukasz Fabianski
Kieran Gibbs
Olivier Giroud
Carl Jenkinson
Laurent Koscielny
Per Mertesacker
Ignasi Miquel
Ryo
Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain
Lukas Podolski
Aaron Ramsey
Tomas Rosicky
Bacary Sagna
Wojciech Szczesny
Theo Walcott
Jack Wilshere
Serge Gnabry
Damian Martinez
Kris Olsson
Chuba Akpom
Thomas Eisfeld
Chuks Aneke
Gedion Zelalem

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