Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta confirmed Cristhian Mosquera will be sidelined for longer than first feared, a setback that added to a mounting availability problem before Wednesday\u2019s Champions League fixture at Club Brugge. \u201cUnfortunately he\u2019s going to be out for weeks,\u201d Arteta said ahead of the trip. \u201cUnfortunately, it\u2019s much more than what we expected, but the player was feeling it, so he\u2019s going to be out for weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
The injury situation worsened further when Jurri\u00ebn Timber, who has been used primarily at right back and recently deputised for Mosquera, was ruled out after sustaining a \u201creally bad kick\u201d in Saturday\u2019s defeat to Aston Villa. \u201cIt was too early\u201d for Timber to return, Arteta added, while Riccardo Calafiori was only fit enough to occupy a place on the bench.<\/p>\n
Those late absences forced Arteta into an unplanned reshuffle and a last-minute selection change, with Christian N\u00f8rgaard drafted into the middle of the backline for the trip. The former Brentford captain has seen limited action since his arrival, a combination of his own fitness problems and the strong start by Mart\u00edn Zubimendi restricting his chances in his preferred midfield role. On Wednesday, however, N\u00f8rgaard impressed in a defensive role.<\/p>\n
Arteta was full of praise after the 3\u20130 victory in Belgium. \u201cIt\u2019s a really positive evening and I think it\u2019s very difficult to win away from home in the Champions League,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve done it with a lot of absences, especially in the backline and even this morning we lost two players.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love the way the team reacted to that, collectively, individually, for example what Christian N\u00f8rgaard has done just talks about how much better he makes all of us with his attitude, with his commitment in the manner that he prepares and is able to perform. So yeah, overall a really positive night.\u201d The result offered a timely boost for a side managing multiple defensive issues while progressing in Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arteta: Mosquera out for weeks; Arsenal manage absences as Timber and Calafiori miss out in Brugge..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5015,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,1303],"tags":[1047,606,199],"class_list":["post-5016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-arsenal-news","tag-champions-league","tag-christian-norgaard","tag-cristhian-mosquera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5016","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=5016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}