Arsenal have been handed a welcome boost ahead of the international break after William Saliba was left out of Zin\u00e9dine Zidane\u2019s latest France squad.<\/p>\n
Mikel Arteta made clear before the announcement that he had been in close contact with French officials over the defender\u2019s situation. He said Arsenal had shared the relevant background before a final call was made, stressing that they had \u201call the information\u201d.<\/p>\n
The manager was also asked whether he would prefer Saliba to remain with Arsenal rather than link up with France. Arteta kept his response measured, saying: \u201cI think it\u2019s something between them more, because William needs minutes as well, I know how much he loves to be around the national team. [Zidane]\u2019s a new manager, a really exciting one as well, so whatever he\u2019s decided is fine for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Saliba, missing out may be disappointing, but the decision will almost certainly have been received with satisfaction inside Arsenal. The club spent much of last season managing his back injury and will be relieved to see him in a positive enough condition to have been in contention for France this month.<\/p>\n
That does not mean the return should be rushed. After such a long spell on the sidelines, Saliba will need careful handling to reduce the risk of aggravating the problem or picking up another minor issue tied to match fitness. Arsenal\u2019s priority will be a controlled comeback rather than an immediate full return.<\/p>\n
He may feature for a spell on Saturday against Hull City, but even that would be followed by another two weeks of rest over the break. That gives Arteta and the Arsenal staff time to work on Saliba\u2019s condition without the pressure of a packed schedule.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saliba\u2019s France omission gives Arsenal a timely chance to manage his return carefully.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22272,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[242,180],"class_list":["post-22273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","tag-injury","tag-player-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22273","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=22273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}