Mikel Arteta confirmed several key Arsenal players are close to returning as the club prepares for Wednesday\u2019s Champions League meeting with Bayern Munich. The manager said Martin \u00d8degaard has resumed training alongside long-term absentee Gabriel Jesus and that a final call on the captain will come after a meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to have a meeting now to decide on Martin,\u201d Arteta told reporters on Tuesday. \u201cHe was very close for the previous game, so we are hopeful that tomorrow he can be in the squad as well.\u201d Eberechi Eze has filled in for \u00d8degaard and scored a hat-trick in the 4\u20131 win over Tottenham Hotspur, meaning the creative midfielder does not have an automatic place to reclaim.<\/p>\n
Arteta urged caution over Gabriel Jesus despite the forward\u2019s encouraging progress. \u201c[Jesus is] quite close to be fair, and it\u2019s earlier than we expected,\u201d Arteta said, before adding \u201c… in the next few days he\u2019s going to have another step to make, with a game that we\u2019re going to organise for him, and after that he\u2019s just going to be knocking on the door, because he\u2019s Gabriel, a winner, that\u2019s how it\u2019s happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kai Havertz and Viktor Gy\u00f6keres are also pushing to return. Arteta described both as \u201creally good\u201d and said they are pushing to be involved against Chelsea on Sunday. Havertz has not featured since the Premier League opener against Manchester United on Aug. 17 with a knee injury. Gy\u00f6keres left early against Burnley prior to the November break with a muscle problem.<\/p>\n
Arteta has adapted in attack by using Mikel Merino up front; Merino assisted Leandro Trossard\u2019s opener against Tottenham. The potential return of multiple forwards is significant ahead of a run that sees Arsenal play 10 matches in a 34-day period.<\/p>\n
Arsenal welcomed back Noni Madueke and Gabriel Martinelli against Tottenham, and Riccardo Calafiori played the full 90 minutes. Madueke and Martinelli are expected to be available for the Bayern match, while Myles Lewis-Skelly may start in defence ahead of Calafiori.<\/p>\n
Current absences logged include Havertz (knee, 17 matches missed), Gy\u00f6keres (muscle, 2), \u00d8degaard (shoulder, knee, 9), Gabriel (hamstring, 1), Madueke (knee, 11) and Martinelli (groin, 4), among others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arteta hints at returns for \u00d8degaard, Jesus, Havertz and Gy\u00f6keres ahead of Bayern clash. squad news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4705,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,172],"tags":[1254,947,1047],"class_list":["post-4706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-epl","tag-adductor-injury","tag-ankle-injury","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4706","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=4706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}