Arsenal’s early-season fitness problems continued when William Saliba appeared in clear discomfort and was withdrawn five minutes into the Gunners’ game vs. Liverpool on Sunday afternoon. The swift change forced Mikel Arteta’s side to alter their defensive shape almost immediately.<\/p>\n
Saliba has been an untouchable in Mikel Arteta\u2019s lineup and a key piece to the Gunners\u2019 success. His partnership with Gabriel in the heart of defence has become arguably the best in the Premier League. Losing him so early presented a significant disruption to Arsenal’s plan for the match.<\/p>\n
Cristhian Mosquera, the Arsenal newcomer, replaced the injured Saliba. The former Valencia man will now get his first extended appearance at his new club at one of the toughest away venues in England, a baptism that comes with immediate responsibility.<\/p>\n
It has been a worrying start to the season for Arsenal fitness-wise. Saliba is now the fourth player to suffer an injury during the Gunners\u2019 first three games of the season, joining Kai Havertz, Martin \u00d8degaard and Bukayo Saka. The latter two had to be taken off in Arsenal\u2019s most recent game vs. Leeds United.<\/p>\n
Saka and Havertz sat out the trip to Anfield while \u00d8degaard was only fit enough to start on the bench. There is still no information regarding Saliba\u2019s injury, and Arsenal were forced to call upon recent additions to cover the absences.<\/p>\n
Cristhian Mosquera came on for the Frenchman, while Viktor Gy\u00f6keres and Noni Madueke filled in for Havertz and Saka respectively. The sequence underlines how much Arsenal have had to rely on summer signings in the opening matches and how quickly squad depth can be tested when several key players are unavailable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Early injury to William Saliba forces Arsenal to reshuffle at Liverpool as Mosquera replaces him….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2309,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,172],"tags":[826,199,242,278],"class_list":["post-2310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-epl","tag-bukayo-saka","tag-cristhian-mosquera","tag-injury","tag-william-saliba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2310","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=2310"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2322,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2310\/revisions\/2322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}