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Double Arsenal injury blow: Star to undergo surgery, another ruled out for 7 games

By mac14 on January 27, 2019

Arsenal’s injury woes have worsened after the club confirmed that Sokratis has been ruled out until the end of February with an ankle injury while Laurent Koscielny needs surgery on his jaw.

Sokratis limped off with an ankle injury during the first half of our FA Cup fourth round defeat to Manchester United on Friday night and Unai Emery was initially hopeful it was nothing serious.

However, the injury is much worse than anticipated as the club have revealed that Sokratis has been ruled out until the end of February meaning he’ll miss at least the next seven games in all competitions.

The Greek international will sit out our Europa League double-header with BATE and miss Premier League games with Cardiff, Man City, Huddersfield, Southampton and Bournemouth while he’ll also be in a race against time for the trip to Tottenham on March 2nd.

It’s a huge blow to lose Sokratis at this time as he’s only just returned from injury but our problems at the back are compounded by a nasty jaw problem to Koscielny.

The Frenchman was forced off with a suspected broken jaw against United after being accidentally kicked in the face by Romelu Lukaku but thankfully the club says he’s only suffered bruising and swelling.

An update on Arsenal.com said:

Laurent Koscielny
Bruising and soft tissue swelling to face and jaw. Being reviewed on a daily basis.

Sokratis
Left ankle. Expected to return to full training by the end of February.

However, L’Equipe claim that while Koscielny hasn’t suffered a break, he will still need to undergo an operation to remove a blood clot that is putting pressure on nerves in his jaw.

It’s not clear how long the Frenchman will be out for but let’s pray it’s not a lengthy absence as we’re down to the bare bones in defence with Rob Holding and Hector Bellerin out for the rest of the season.

Shkodran Mustafi is certain to be recalled for the foreseeable future but Emery is going to have to call upon Nacho Monreal, Stephan Lichtsteiner, Dinos Mavropanos or move Granit Xhaka in to defence if Koscielny is ruled out for any significant time.

It’s a nightmare situation as we fight to save our season. We might be able to get past Cardiff at home with a patched-up defence but Man City away next Sunday could get messy.