Arsenal suffered a late injury setback in the final stages of the pre-match routine before hosting Brighton & Hove Albion at the Emirates Stadium on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n
At 2:46 p.m. GMT, 14 minutes before kick-off, Arsenal confirmed a late change to the starting lineup after left back Riccardo Calafiori picked up what was described only as an “issue” during the pre-game warm-up.<\/p>\n
Myles Lewis-Skelly was drafted in and handed his first Premier League start of 2025\u201326. Lewis-Skelly had made that role his own last season and played his way into the England squad as a result.<\/p>\n
The timing was unwelcome for Arsenal, arriving as Gabriel featured in a matchday squad for the first time since suffering an injury on international duty in mid-November. Gabriel Jesus has also recently returned, with Kai Havertz potentially only “days” away from his comeback.<\/p>\n
Calafiori’s withdrawal led to 16-year-old Marli Salmon being added to the matchday squad among the substitutes. The versatile teenager, able to operate at right back or centre back, has appeared a handful of times in recent weeks and his inclusion underlines Mikel Arteta’s readiness to hand opportunities to young talents.<\/p>\n
Salmon was on the bench for the Premier League defeat at the hands of Aston Villa earlier this month. He was then given a senior debut for the final seven minutes of the Champions League win over Club Brugge a few days later, before re-emerging among the substitutes against Crystal Palace in the Carabao Cup four days ago.<\/p>\n
The defender grew up in north east London and was part of the first-team squad during preseason 2025 while still 15. He will not turn 17 until August 29 next year.<\/p>\n
Discussing Salmon\u2019s involvement against Club Brugge, Arteta remarked: “We had to really consider it because we were playing a really good side that had some really good results in the Champions League at home, but we knew that at some point we had to use him.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Late pre-game issue forces Riccardo Calafiori out; Myles Lewis-Skelly starts, Marli Salmon on bench.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5424,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,773,969],"tags":[1312,1305,1047],"class_list":["post-5425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-brighton-hove-albion","category-premier-league","tag-arsenal-fitness","tag-bench-selection","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5425","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=5425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}