Arsenal reported a curious pre-match sighting before Sunday\u2019s north London derby. Martin \u00d8degaard, Noni Madueke, Riccardo Calafiori and Gabriel Martinelli were reportedly seen with the squad shortly before the game at home to Tottenham Hotspur. Marquee summer signing Viktor Gy\u00f6keres is thought to remain out of action, but a number of his teammates were visible on Arsenal\u2019s prematch walk, per Sky Sports News.<\/p>\n
That visual update arrived with immediate caveats. The club\u2019s handling of injured players has long been the subject of scrutiny and, according to former fullback Oleksandr Zinchenko, deception has been used as a tactic. \u201c[Arteta] likes to play games with the opposition. I\u2019ve seen him tell injured players to come on the team bus and walk into the dressing room with their wash bag, to put the other manager off the scent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mikel Arteta himself has acknowledged a deliberate opacity in the past. \u201cI don\u2019t want to make it easy for anyone.<\/p>\n
“The opponent has to make sure they do their homework\u2014like I have to. When I know, I am not going to lie to you, I am not going to say, \u2018He\u2019s not fit\u2019 and then I play him\u2014I would never do that\u2014but, if I am certain or I don\u2019t want to tell you, I will keep you guessing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arteta did not explicitly rule out \u00d8degaard, Madueke, Calafiori or Martinelli for the derby. On the specific matter of the Italian defender who returned early from international duty, Arteta said on Friday: “Tomorrow we have another training session and we\u2019ll see how he is.” He applied the same measured stance to the other absentees: “See how some of them are feeling, whether it\u2019s a bit too close for this game, or we feel that they can contribute to the game,” and “I\u2019m hopeful that we can make another step, but I certainly cannot say.”<\/p>\n
\u00d8degaard\u2019s season has been disrupted by recurring shoulder trouble and, after a knee problem, he has been sidelined for six weeks. The Norway captain joined up with his country in November, where St\u00e5le Solbakken said he was still “some distance away” from a return. \u00d8degaard offered optimism in his programme notes: \u201cThis week I\u2019ve been working really hard on my rehab\u2014it\u2019s going very well,\u201d the captain wrote. \u201cI can feel I\u2019m getting closer every day and getting towards the final stages, where it\u2019s a lot more exciting.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been doing some pitch work and training, so I really feel like I\u2019m getting there. That\u2019s the best part of the rehab, when you\u2019re getting closer to joining the team, you can do a lot more on the pitch and you can be more aggressive in the rehab. ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Four injured players were pictured with the squad before the derby, but their returns remain unclear<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4651,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,172],"tags":[1006,1215,1275],"class_list":["post-4652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-epl","tag-captaincy","tag-controversy","tag-injury-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4652","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=4652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}