Arsenal winger Bukayo Saka moved to calm any alarm after a worrying moment in England\u2019s World Cup qualifier victory over Serbia. The 24-year-old appeared uncomfortable immediately after an incident during the match but completed the full 90 minutes and later explained the gesture to his bench.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just wanted to change my boots,\u201d Saka, who missed part of the start of the season with a hamstring injury, explained. \u201cThat was it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shortly after signalling to the bench, Saka hurried to the touchline to swap footwear and returned to the pitch, allowing him to continue through the rest of the game.<\/p>\n
Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has offered encouraging updates on a number of players, including Noni Madueke, Kai Havertz and Gabriel Martinelli, but this international period has brought other concerns for the club.<\/p>\n
Norway boss St\u00e5le Solbakken revealed earlier this week that captain Martin \u00d8degaard remains \u201csome distance away\u201d from a return. The squad were also monitoring defender Riccardo Calafiori after he suffered an injury following his involvement with Italy.<\/p>\n
Calafiori did not train with his teammates before Thursday\u2019s victory over Moldova and did not feature in that match. Reports in Italy indicate the defender is managing pain but could still feature in Sunday\u2019s clash with Norway.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to thank the likes of [Nicol\u00f2] Barella, Calafiori and [Alessandro] Bastoni for being here, as it was by no means to be taken for granted,\u201d Italy manager Gennaro Gattuso admitted.<\/p>\n
Arsenal return to Premier League action against Tottenham Hotspur after the international break. Arteta will want as many options available as possible for the north London derby, one of the most important fixtures of the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saka insisted his touchline signal in the Serbia win was a boot change, not a call for substitution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4453,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,961],"tags":[826],"class_list":["post-4454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-international","tag-bukayo-saka"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4454","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=4454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}