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Arsenal star suffers injury blow during Liverpool thriller

By mac14 on December 23, 2017

Arsenal’s injury problems deepened last night as Arsene Wenger has revealed Nacho Monreal was forced off with an ankle injury during our thrilling 3-3 draw with Liverpool.

Monreal has been deployed as a central defender by Wenger in recent games and he once again lined-up alongside Laurent Koscielny in a back four against Liverpool last night.

Like many of his team mates, Nacho had a first half to forget as he was dragged all over the place by the Merseysiders attack and they should have been out of sight by half time.

It looked like the boss had put Monreal out his misery by hooking him at the break with the fit again Shkodran Mustafi brought on to replace the Spaniard at the interval.

However, Wenger revealed after the thrilling 3-3 draw that it was actually an enforced substitution as Monreal suffered an ankle injury in the first half.

The boss told Arsenal.com:

on whether Monreal was injured…
Yes, ankle problem.

I knew Wenger didn’t have the balls to make a bold [and correct] substitution at half time! However, news of Monreal’s injury will come as a blow as he’s been an important player for us this season.

The Spaniard had played every minute of Premier League football so far this season heading in to the Liverpool game and he’s been one of our most consistent players [until he started playing as a centre back in a back four].

Monreal will be further assessed to see how long he’ll be out for but he must be a serious doubt for the trip to Palace next week. The only silver lining is we’ll now see Mustafi resume his partnership with Koscielny in the middle of defence.