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Wenger reveals Sanchez injury blow + 3 other fitness doubts

By mac14 on August 9, 2017

Arsene Wenger has been speaking at his pre-match press conference ahead of our Premier League opener with Leicester City and he’s given the latest team news.

Unfortunately the boss has revealed that we could be without up to ten first team players on Friday so it’s going to be a difficult start to the new season.

Alexis Sanchez picked up an abdominal strain in training on Sunday morning and has been ruled out for around two weeks.

The Chilean international returned to pre-season training late due to his participation in the Confederations Cup and he’ll now miss at least our first two games of the new season against Leicester and Stoke.

Wenger also confirmed that he has a number of other selection concerns as Mesut Ozil, Aaron Ramsey and Per Mertesacker are doubts for Friday night’s clash at the Emirates.

Ozil missed the Community Shield win over Chelsea due to an ankle injury while Ramsey has a minor calf problem and it looks as though both are facing a race against time to face the Foxes.

Mertesacker did start at Wembley but the German defender was forced off in the first half after suffering a nasty cut above his eye so he’ll need to be assessed ahead of the Leicester game.

Other than that, Laurent Koscielny isn’t available due to suspension while Shkodran Mustafi is still working his way back to full fitness following his late arrival to pre-season training this summer so we have selection problems in defence.

Wenger told Arsenal.com this morning:

“I have plenty of uncertainties about the players who didn’t play against Chelsea. For example Ramsey, Ozil, Mertesacker… and of course Koscielny is suspended.

“I have players coming back who have not played, like Mustafi. Alexis will not be available for example, so I cannot go into the game with too many uncertainties.

“He [Sanchez] had a little abdominal strain that he caught on Sunday morning in training, before he came to Wembley. He had a scan two days ago and he’s out for a while – we don’t know if it is two weeks or one more week, but he will not be available. We think he will not play at Stoke.”

With so many injuries to worry about, it’s going to be extremely difficult to beat Leicester on Friday night but thankfully we have a large squad so fingers crossed we manage to come away with all three points.