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Team News Update: Oxlade-Chamberlain, Gibbs + Wilshere

By mac14 on May 1, 2014

We play our final home game of the season this weekend when West Brom come to the Emirates on Sunday afternoon.

Arsene Wenger has given the latest team news to Arsenal.com and as well as confirming we have no new injuries following on from Monday’s 3-0 win over Newcastle, he also gave an update on the fitness of Kieran Gibbs, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Jack Wilshere.

Gibbsy has missed the last three games with a hamstring injury and although he’s back in ‘fitness training’, Sunday’s game comes too soon so Nacho Monreal will most likely continue at left-back.

Jack’s back in training but the club are being cautious not to rush him back too soon so he’s not in contention yet, and the Ox is still recovering from a groin injury that’s hampered him in recent weeks. Arsene said:

on changes to the team from Monday night…

At the moment no, the same group of players should be available for Sunday. It’s our last home game and you want everybody available and finish with a win.

on Kieran Gibbs…

Gibbs will be a bit short for Sunday. The good news is that he’s back in fitness training but he is not back in the full training group yet.

on Oxlade-Chamberlain and Wilshere…

They are not ready yet. Alex is in treatment at the moment and not in training. It’s very difficult to give you a time-scale on him at the moment.

It sounds like Gibbs should be back in the squad to face Norwich on the final day of the season, but we might not see The Ox or Wilshere until the FA Cup final against Hull the following weekend.

We played some lovely stuff against the Magpies earlier this week so I’d be happy to see an unchanged line-up this Sunday, although the likes of Mathieu Flamini and Tomas Rosicky are pushing for recalls as we go searching for a win that would secure fourth place.