Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta expressed frustration with the club\u2019s busy schedule after Declan Rice and Cristhian Mosquera both left Wednesday\u2019s victory over Brentford with what appeared to be muscular problems.<\/p>\n
Mosquera, who had been deputising for the injured Gabriel and William Saliba, did not complete the first 45 minutes. Rice was forced off in the latter stages of the second half. Arteta attributed both issues to the demands placed on players by a packed calendar.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow we play Wednesday night, and we have to play Saturday morning as well,\u201d Arteta reflected. \u201cSo we can play minutes, but if they can please give us just a little bit more time to recover and to make the well-being of these players a little bit easier, that would be great.<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably it\u2019s not one thing, but we can help the players and everybody, the league and everybody, to do what we have to do. Give us another day, especially the teams that are playing so much in Europe. To everybody in general, I think we can do that because we\u2019re going to benefit from that.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve never had such a schedule at every level, not only in the Premier League, but every competition internationally as well. So we need to try to do that, please.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not an argument, I think it\u2019s common sense,\u201d he added. \u201cI think it\u2019s not at some point this becomes too much, you know, and the players are not machines. But we have to try to do that when we can.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arteta confirmed Rice would be sent for further scans on his injury, with a final verdict to emerge on Thursday. In an off-camera meeting with Sky Sports News , Rice insisted he was \u201cfine\u201d and would be fit enough to face Aston Villa on Saturday.<\/p>\n
There were no further details on Mosquera\u2019s condition. Saliba was pictured in the stands appearing to shake his head as the summer signing left the pitch, making Mosquera the third centre back on the sidelines. Arteta has said Saliba was just \u201cdays\u201d away from a comeback, while Gabriel remains \u201cweeks\u201d away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arteta warns fixture congestion after Declan Rice and Cristhian Mosquera suffered muscular injuries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4880,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,172],"tags":[199,1298],"class_list":["post-4881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-epl","tag-cristhian-mosquera","tag-fixture-congestion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4881","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=4881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}