Arsenal will be without Mart\u00edn Zubimendi for their fourth Champions League outing in the group stage as the midfielder serves a one-game suspension for yellow card accumulation. The Spaniard, who has been a regular presence in midfield, will not travel with the squad for the trip to Prague where Arsenal face Slavia Prague in Gameweek 4.<\/p>\n
Zubimendi has been influential this season, logging 1,099 minutes \u2014 the third-most in Mikel Arteta\u2019s squad across all competitions \u2014 and scoring twice. Both goals arrived in the 3\u20130 win over Nottingham Forest in September. He trained ahead of the midweek match but his absence is disciplinary rather than fitness related. Zubimendi did pick up a knock in Saturday\u2019s 2\u20130 win over Burnley, but that is not the reason for his unavailability.<\/p>\n
The travelling party is already depleted by a list of injuries. Gabriel Jesus, Martin \u00d8degaard, Kai Havertz, Noni Madueke, and Gabriel Martinelli are all absent due to injury. Separately, Viktor Gy\u00f6keres and Zubimendi were listed as concerns over the weekend; the former suffered a muscle issue that will keep him out until after the November international break.<\/p>\n
UEFA\u2019s disciplinary framework means Zubimendi became the first player to earn a suspension in this season\u2019s Champions League after accumulating three yellow cards in Arsenal\u2019s opening three group games. He will be eligible to return for Gameweek 5 when Arsenal welcome Bayern Munich to the Emirates. The rules also stipulate that players receive one-game bans for every odd-numbered yellow card they receive after the third. If Zubimendi picks up a fifth yellow card before the slate is wiped clean after the quarterfinals, he would face an additional suspension.<\/p>\n
To cover his absence in central midfield, Arteta has turned to summer signing Christian N\u00f8rgaard, deploying him in a holding position for the match in Prague. Arsenal go into the fixture aiming to preserve their perfect start to the competition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Zubimendi is suspended for Arsenal’s trip to Prague after three yellows; Christian N\u00f8rgaard starts..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4265,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,1030],"tags":[1047,606],"class_list":["post-4266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-gameweek-4","tag-champions-league","tag-christian-norgaard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4266","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=4266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}