Norway manager St\u00e5le Solbakken confirmed that Martin \u00d8degaard picked up a knock in Tuesday\u2019s Champions League victory over Sporting CP, but sought to downplay the severity. \u201cHe [\u00d8degaard] took a minor knock where he shouldn\u2019t have,\u201d the Norway boss told reporters at the 2026 Football Conference at Ullevaal Stadium on Thursday, \u201cbut I don\u2019t think it\u2019s anything serious.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019ll be back on the field before long. It was a minor setback, and we don\u2019t need any more of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The remarks will offer some relief to Arsenal supporters, but they also underline a familiar problem for the club\u2019s captain. \u00d8degaard has been through an injury-hit 2025\/26: an unusual shoulder issue disrupted the start of the campaign, followed by knee damage in October that kept the 27-year-old out for almost two months. He returned for the busy festive period and enjoyed an unbroken run between December and January, only for a succession of minor complaints to interrupt his season thereafter.<\/p>\n
Most seriously, \u00d8degaard missed the whole of March with another knee problem, a lay-off that ruled him out of the Carabao Cup final and Norway\u2019s final friendlies before the World Cup roster is announced. Solbakken\u2019s comment that the recent issue came in a place \u201cwhere [it] shouldn\u2019t have\u201d suggests that the troublesome knee may be involved once more, even if the manager stressed the setback appears minor for now.<\/p>\n
Arsenal\u2019s form has been affected by a wave of injuries. The club had not lost back-to-back matches before elimination from both domestic cup competitions in successive games, and that dip \u2014 patched up by a nervy Champions League win in midweek \u2014 has coincided with absences across the squad.<\/p>\n
Eberechi Eze has often deputised for \u00d8degaard but was struck down with a calf problem just as he was enjoying the best form of his debut season and is not expected back until the end of April at the earliest. Mikel Merino is also unlikely to feature again before the World Cup, leaving a creative void that, for Arsenal, is most reliably filled by \u00d8degaard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Solbakken calls \u00d8degaard\u2019s latest issue a minor knock; Arsenal face selection strain for run-in plus<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11265,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,1303],"tags":[1006,1066,1047],"class_list":["post-11266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-arsenal-news","tag-captaincy","tag-carabao-cup","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11266","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=11266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}