Arsenal will remain without two important defenders for the opening stretch of the 2026\/27 Premier League season, after Mikel Arteta offered another update on Jurri\u00ebn Timber and William Saliba.<\/p>\n
Timber has been involved with the pre-season squad, but Arteta said the right back is not close to a full return. The Dutchman remains \u201cstill weeks away\u201d from playing, with the manager adding that there is no exact timeline. Arsenal begin their title defence with a Friday night trip to Coventry City on Aug. 21, and with four league matches to follow before the September international break, a comeback before October appears unlikely.<\/p>\n
\u201cI cannot be very precise with [Timber\u2019s return schedule],\u201d Arteta told reporters. \u201cJurri\u00ebn is progressing really well. He\u2019s on the [training] pitch and doing quite a lot right now but is still weeks away [from playing a match]\u2014I cannot tell you how [many weeks].\u201d<\/p>\n
Saliba\u2019s situation looks even more serious. The defender went to the World Cup, but a back injury that was worsened in France\u2019s semifinal defeat to Spain last month has ruled him out of contention. Arsenal had already confirmed that he would miss an \u201cextended period,\u201d and Arteta now says \u201cWilly is in rest mode\u201d and has done \u201calmost nothing\u201d over recent weeks so as not to aggravate the problem further. \u201cIt\u2019s going to take some time to heal.\u201d<\/p>\n
That leaves Arsenal with a notable gap beside Gabriel at the heart of defence. Cristhian Mosquera is again in line to cover for Saliba, while Timber\u2019s absence increases the need for Ben White on the right, despite transfer links this summer. Piero Hincapi\u00e9 is another option at centre back, although he has mainly been used at left back because of Riccardo Calafiori\u2019s inconsistent availability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arteta says Timber is weeks away and Saliba is in rest mode, leaving Arsenal short in defence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18392,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[242,180,1980],"class_list":["post-18393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","tag-injury","tag-player-news","tag-pre-season"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18393","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=18393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}