Arsenal face the prospect of losing Cristhian Mosquera for up to six weeks after an ankle injury that has taken the youngster out of contention. In-depth tests are still to be carried out, but BBC Sport note Arsenal\u2019s initial fear is that Mosquera may need up to six weeks to recover, which would put him out until late January at the earliest.<\/p>\n
Ahead of the trip to Aston Villa, Mikel Arteta admitted the club may have to be active in the January transfer window to help cover ongoing injury issues in the squad, with problems concentrated in the centre of defence.<\/p>\n
Gabriel remains \u201cweeks\u201d away from a return, while Arteta has continued to stress that Saliba needs \u201cdays\u201d to recover from his own issue. Despite that confidence, Saliba was not fit enough to be included in the matchday squad for Saturday\u2019s game, forcing Arteta to reshuffle his back line.<\/p>\n
Piero Hincapi\u00e9 kept his place and was partnered by Dutch international Jurri\u00ebn Timber, whose stronger performances this season have been on the right side of defence. Ben White moved into the right-back position.<\/p>\n
The combined absences of Gabriel, Saliba and Mosquera left Arsenal without a single senior centre back on the bench for the match. The only defensive cover called up was 16-year-old Marli Salmon, who made his first appearance in a competitive senior squad.<\/p>\n
There was a positive update elsewhere in the team. Winger Leandro Trossard returned to fitness after missing two games with a knock and was available for a place on the bench.<\/p>\n
Arsenal\u2019s starting XI for the match against Aston Villa, set up in a 4-3-3, was: Raya; White, Timber, Hincapi\u00e9, Calafiori; Zubimendi, Rice, \u00d8degaard; Saka, Merino, Eze.<\/p>\n
Substitutes named were: Arrizabalaga, Lewis-Skelly, Salmon, N\u00f8rgaard, Nwaneri, Trossard, Martinelli, Madueke, Gy\u00f6keres.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mosquera could miss up to six weeks, leaving Arsenal short of senior centre-backs; Saliba out. still<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4908,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,1303],"tags":[947,984,199],"class_list":["post-4909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-arsenal-news","tag-ankle-injury","tag-ben-white","tag-cristhian-mosquera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4909","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=4909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}