Arsenal captain Martin \u00d8degaard has outlined the uncertainty around his recovery after the medial collateral ligament diagnosis that followed knee-to-knee contact in the West Ham game. Faced with reports he would be sidelined until at least the second half of November, Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta accepted that he would be without his skipper for \u201ca few weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00d8degaard declined to offer a firm return date, asking for patience while describing the practical difficulties of rehabilitating his stronger limb. \u201cIt\u2019s tricky to set a return date with this type of injury because, especially it being my [stronger] left leg, a lot depends on how it goes when I start getting back on the pitch,\u201d \u00d8degaard wrote in Arsenal\u2019s programme ahead of Tuesday\u2019s Champions League thumping of Atl\u00e9tico Madrid.<\/p>\n
He explained the day-to-day challenge of testing the leg under match actions. \u201cSometimes it can be quite sore when you start passing the ball and shooting and all these things with that leg, so it\u2019s really hard to say a date. All I can say is I\u2019m progressing really well at the moment. I think we will know more when I start getting back on the training pitches and we\u2019ll see how that goes. If that goes really well then it can be quick.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the grind of recovery he was candid. \u201cIt\u2019s hard work and long days in recovery, but that\u2019s what you want and I feel like it\u2019s going well so far,\u201d \u00d8degaard continued. \u201cI feel like I\u2019ve been really unlucky a few times this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a knee-to-knee contact in the West Ham game, and at the time I didn\u2019t know if it was bad or not because they can be quite painful, but normally you can run it off. So that\u2019s why I tried to keep going, to see if it was getting better.\u201d Arsenal would later diagnose \u00d8degaard with medial collateral ligament damage.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was hoping it was just a knock that would improve in a couple of minutes,\u201d he recalled. \u201cBut it didn\u2019t get better and I felt like something was wrong, so in the end it was better to come off. As soon as we got inside, the medical team had a proper look at it. When the adrenaline stopped flowing and it settled down a bit, then it was quite sore.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arsenal have recorded four wins in the five matches \u00d8degaard has missed. The club\u2019s recent victory over Atl\u00e9tico required a set piece to break a goalless first half, and without the creativity from his compromised left leg Arsenal have struggled to produce a consistent flow of chances not originating from corners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Odegaard asks for patience after MCL injury; Arsenal have won four of five without their captain…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3960,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,1035],"tags":[1006,1047,1019],"class_list":["post-3961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-atletico-madrid","tag-captaincy","tag-champions-league","tag-creative-players"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3961","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=3961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}