Mikel Arteta has left the door open to a quicker-than-expected return for Kai Havertz, while stressing the need to protect the player’s knee. The German forward missed a significant portion of last season with a hamstring problem and then suffered a knee injury a few days after the opening game of 2025\u201326 that has kept him out since.<\/p>\n
Havertz is not currently expected back before late November, but Arteta refused to rule out a faster recovery. \u201cWith Kai, we know that it will be months with him. I don\u2019t know if it can be weeks, you never know because this is Kai and he\u2019s a different specimen,\u201d the manager told reporters. \u201cWe really miss him. Hopefully, he will be back, and back for the long term as well, so it is very important to look after that knee. So far, he\u2019s progressing pretty well.\u201d<\/p>\n
The manager also described a thorough approach from the medical staff. \u201cWe looked at everything,\u201d he said, and later put recent absences into context: \u201cThe one with Noni is bad luck; it’s a very unfortunate incident. With Kai, something similar. With Ben White, it was similar. With Martin, same as all the guys that have been out, very similar, because he damaged his shoulder twice during the same action on the floor, which is very unlikely to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arteta\u2019s comments come amid wider availability problems for the club. Bukayo Saka and Martin \u00d8degaard have both missed matches this season and Noni Madueke is the latest injury casualty. Gabriel Jesus remains sidelined on a long-term basis. The issue of player fatigue and injuries was also raised by Pep Guardiola after Sunday\u2019s 1\u20131 draw with Manchester City, underlining how availability is shaping the opening weeks of the campaign.<\/p>\n
For now the club will continue to monitor Havertz closely, with Arteta emphasising careful rehabilitation and the hope that the forward can return and contribute over the long term.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arteta says Havertz could return sooner than expected and stresses care for the knee injury. 2025\/26<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3055,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,969],"tags":[1073,984,826],"class_list":["post-3056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-premier-league","tag-acl-injury","tag-ben-white","tag-bukayo-saka"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3056","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=3056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}