Arsenal will face Liverpool at Anfield without Bukayo Saka after the winger suffered a left hamstring problem. The club stressed this is the left hamstring, distinct from the right hamstring that required surgery last season and forced him to miss three months.<\/p>\n
Manager Mikel Arteta has indicated the injury is not believed to be severe and Saka is only expected to be out for a few weeks. That assessment means Arsenal must adjust their right-side options for the early-season fixture at Anfield.<\/p>\n
There is better news on another fitness front. Club captain Martin \u00d8degaard is back in the squad after picking up a shoulder injury against Leeds. The Norwegian was brought off early in that match, replaced by Ethan Nwaneri, and his fitness was a concern heading into the Liverpool game. \u00d8degaard has been named to the bench alongside summer signing Eberechi Eze.<\/p>\n
Eberechi Eze could make his first Arsenal appearance off the bench. For the match, Arteta has chosen Mikel Merino to line up alongside Mart\u00edn Zubimendi and Declan Rice in midfield, a selection that reshapes Arsenal\u2019s balance given Saka\u2019s absence.<\/p>\n
Arsenal travel to Anfield buoyed by a strong recent record at the ground. The Gunners have gone over 1,250 days without a Premier League defeat to Liverpool at Anfield. They have drawn their previous three league visits to the stadium and last lost there in November 2021.<\/p>\n
With Saka sidelined for the short term, Arsenal\u2019s squad choices and the return of \u00d8degaard and the availability of Eze will be central to how they approach a fixture that has significant early-season implications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Left hamstring issue rules Saka out at Anfield; \u00d8degaard back on bench and Eze could feature today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2302,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,172],"tags":[826,414,242],"class_list":["post-2303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-epl","tag-bukayo-saka","tag-eberechi-eze","tag-injury"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2303","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=2303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}