Mikel Arteta confirmed William Saliba asked to be left out of Saturday\u2019s match against Nottingham Forest as he nears full recovery from injury. Cristhian Mosquera partnered Gabriel in central defence as Arsenal secured a 3-0 victory that was marred by an injury blow to captain Martin \u00d8degaard.<\/p>\n
Arteta said Saliba had taken part in training shortly before the game but felt he needed more time. \u201cHe trained [on Friday] and he did the whole session and he was OK,\u201d Arteta explained. \u201cI spoke to him afterwards and he said, \u2018I think I need a few more days\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe turnaround has been too quick for the extent of the injury so when a player says that, don\u2019t push it. I think Mosquera was very, very good.\u201d The manager made clear Saliba\u2019s absence was precautionary rather than the result of any new setback, and that there were no fresh concerns about the centre back.<\/p>\n
Mosquera\u2019s performance drew praise and reinforced the view that he is pressing for regular minutes alongside Arsenal\u2019s established pairing. Asked about the youngster as competition for Saliba and Gabriel, Arteta said: \u201cYou\u2019ve just seen today and what he did in Anfield, very, very hard he\u2019s going to push him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis kid wants it a lot and he\u2019s so willing to learn. He\u2019s got some great qualities that fit very well in any position that we want to use him in relation to the connections and the qualities of the other defenders.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arsenal face a demanding sequence of fixtures in the coming days. They begin their Champions League campaign on Tuesday away to Athletic Club and then host Manchester City at the Emirates Stadium on Sunday. Saliba is expected to play a significant role in both matches if his recovery continues as planned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arteta says Saliba chose to miss Forest match as precaution; Mosquera impressed may force selection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2779,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,969],"tags":[199],"class_list":["post-2780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-premier-league","tag-cristhian-mosquera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2780","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=2780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}