England manager Thomas Tuchel acknowledged that Arsenal\u2019s wave of international withdrawals can appear problematic, but he focused his concern on how Mikel Arteta has managed Declan Rice. Tuchel defended the honesty of Rice and Bukayo Saka while shifting responsibility to the club and its head coach. \u201cThey arrived injured,\u201d he said. \u201cWe knew after the [Carabao Cup] final that there are issues.\u201d<\/p>\n
The former Chelsea boss added that it was for Arsenal and Arteta to \u201cdecide for themselves how much risk they\u2019re taking\u201d by selecting players in compromised conditions. \u201cI\u2019m not willing to take this risk for my key player,\u201d Tuchel pointedly added.<\/p>\n
Tuchel recounted Rice\u2019s long-running discomfort and how the midfielder had continued to play through pain. \u201cHe feels a discomfort since quite a while,\u201d Tuchel said of Rice, \u201cand he\u2019s playing through it, and he\u2019s just now on the edge, where he thinks, \u2018Does this make sense, what I\u2019m doing here, to push through with 70% and push myself and push myself?\u2019 And the same with Bukayo.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arteta defended Rice\u2019s contribution after the December episode when the midfielder missed Arsenal\u2019s 4\u20131 win over Aston Villa with a swollen knee. Four days later Rice started against Bournemouth and scored twice in a 3\u20132 victory. \u201cDeclan Rice was struggling the last few days,” Arteta admitted, \u201cbut pushed and pushed and pushed and made himself available. He played 96 minutes, scored two goals and was one of the best players on the pitch. That is the mentality we need from all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tuchel said the number of Arsenal withdrawals had reached double digits and accepted that \u201cit looks a bit suspicious.\u201d \u201cEveryone can do the math and it\u2019s a lot of players, of course, and during the situation, it looks a bit suspicious,\u201d he conceded, while stressing he could only speak for his squad. \u201cThey both came,\u201d Tuchel outlined. \u201cDeclan was even out on the pitch. He did not come and say, \u2018Guys, I\u2019m going home.\u2019 I heard there were [international] camps where players did not even show up with boots and stuff. Then it becomes, \u2018O.K.\u2019<\/p>\n
On medical checks and trust he added: \u201cI understand the look of it,\u201d Tuchel added. \u201cI still have 100% trust in the honesty of Bukayo and Declan. We did medical tests. I saw them. I have no reason to believe that Declan is not honest with me. I have no reason to believe Bukayo is not honest. But given the amount of [withdrawn] Arsenal players, I understand the look.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tuchel also reflected on Madueke\u2019s collision at Wembley: \u201cActually he got lucky that it\u2019s not worse,\u201d the 52-year-old reflected. \u201cHe is out for some days and maybe some weeks but it could have been much worse. It was a proper collision.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tuchel warned Arsenal’s withdrawals looked suspicious and criticised Arteta for risking Rice today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10298,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,172],"tags":[1359,826,1066],"class_list":["post-10299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-epl","tag-arsenal-injury","tag-bukayo-saka","tag-carabao-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}