Arsenal confirmed William Saliba would not travel to Stamford Bridge after sustaining “a knock in training” ahead of the weekend fixture with Chelsea. The club released a brief statement outlining the issue, which left supporters and staff surprised given the high-profile nature of the match.<\/p>\n
The absence disrupted a pre-match narrative that had centred on potential returnees. Cole Palmer was due back for the Blues and Mikel Arteta had teased reunions with several Arsenal absentees. Viktor Gy\u00f6keres and Gabriel Jesus were restored to the matchday squad on Sunday, but Saliba\u2019s omission represented a serious defensive setback.<\/p>\n
It is unclear exactly when the problem occurred. Arteta did not mention any issue with Saliba during Friday\u2019s press conference, though that omission does not prove the knock happened in the two days that followed. The club described the player as a 24-year-old who had picked up an unspecified injury in training.<\/p>\n
Saliba was joined on the sidelines by his trusted centre back partner Gabriel, forcing Arteta into a rare outing without either of his first-choice defenders. Since the 5\u20130 defeat to Manchester City in August 2021, Arteta has named at least one of Saliba or Gabriel in the starting XI for 159 of the subsequent 160 Premier League matches. The only exception was the final day of the 2024\u201325 campaign against already-relegated Southampton.<\/p>\n
On that final day Jakub Kiwior and Kieran Tierney patrolled the backline and conceded to a Ross Stewart header from the second-worst team in Premier League history. Both Kiwior and Tierney have since left the club, which compounded the selection problem for the trip to Chelsea.<\/p>\n
Arteta turned to the inexperienced pairing of Cristhian Mosquera and Piero Hincapi\u00e9 for the match. Both Spanish speakers joined Arsenal over the summer and had been eased into Premier League action alongside one of Saliba or Gabriel. The duo may never have started a top-flight match together before, but they were called upon previously to hold the fort in a Carabao Cup third-round tie against Brighton & Hove Albion last month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arsenal were without William Saliba at Chelsea after a late training knock, forcing reshuffle on TV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4788,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,172],"tags":[1066,319,199],"class_list":["post-4789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-epl","tag-carabao-cup","tag-cole-palmer","tag-cristhian-mosquera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4789","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=4789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}