Arsenal’s match against Nottingham Forest was disrupted barely 18 minutes in when Mikel Arteta made the early change that signalled fresh selection headaches. Martin \u00d8degaard required extensive treatment from Arsenal’s physio and, after attempting to continue, was withdrawn and replaced by Ethan Nwaneri.<\/p>\n
\u00d8degaard’s departure compounds concerns around the team. The captain’s recent performance levels have been questioned in recent weeks and months, and his exit added to an already stretched squad. Arteta was already without Gabriel Jesus, Kai Havertz and Bukayo Saka, three attacking players who would ordinarily expect significant minutes as starters.<\/p>\n
Defensive availability also remained an issue. William Saliba missed the trip to Forest after sustaining an ankle injury prior to the 1\u20130 defeat to Liverpool before the international break. Saliba attempted to play at Anfield but was forced off after just five minutes. Arteta confirmed on Friday that Saliba was back in training, but he was not named in Arsenal’s squad when teamsheets were announced.<\/p>\n
To cover absences, Arteta handed Eberechi Eze a first Arsenal start while Noni Madueke was selected on the opposite flank. Cristhian Mosquera was the player called upon to fill in for Saliba at the back. Those changes reflected the manager’s need to adapt his XI under constrained circumstances.<\/p>\n
Arsenal’s mood improved shortly after the half-hour mark when Mart\u00edn Zubimendi opened his goalscoring account for the club. After Madueke’s corner was partially cleared, Zubimendi produced a volley from outside the penalty area that flew into Matz Sels’ top corner. The goal provided a notable moment in a match influenced heavily by absences and early substitutions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00d8degaard taken off after 18 minutes, adding to Arsenal injury concerns; Zubimendi scored a volley. .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2741,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,298],"tags":[947,414,677],"class_list":["post-2742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-nottingham-forest","tag-ankle-injury","tag-eberechi-eze","tag-ethan-nwaneri"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2742","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=2742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}