Mikel Arteta confirmed Declan Rice is making progress after a knee problem forced him out of Tuesday\u2019s 4\u20131 victory over Aston Villa, but the manager was cautious about the midfielder\u2019s chances of featuring at Bournemouth this weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cDeclan got a big kick in his knee during the match [against Brighton ], at the start of the match actually, and by the time he finished the match he had a massive swell up,\u201d Arteta revealed ahead of the midweek contest. \u201cThe game [against Villa] was too early for him to be able to consider.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rice\u2019s absence was a notable subplot early on. Villa began strongly at the Emirates, repeatedly probing a midfield missing the England international, and Ollie Watkins spurned a clear first-half chance. Arsenal regrouped midway through the opening period and took the lead three minutes after the interval from a corner. The set piece had been won by Jurri\u00ebn Timber, who, after a more reserved inverted role in the first half, was able to push forward while Piero Hincapi\u00e9 tucked in to provide cover in Rice\u2019s absence.<\/p>\n
Villa then folded. Mart\u00edn Zubimendi slipped through the centre to make it 2\u20130 and Leandro Trossard and Gabriel Jesus added two goals separated by less than 10 minutes to complete a statement win. Aside from a late Watkins consolation, the main concern for Arteta remained Rice\u2019s availability.<\/p>\n
When asked bluntly if Rice would be fit for Saturday\u2019s trip to Bournemouth, Arteta said: \u201cIt depends.\u201d He added, \u201cThe swelling has to come right down for him to have the chance to function. He wasn\u2019t able to do that today, he\u2019s improving. But let\u2019s see what happens in the next couple of days.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rice watched the action from the bench on a bitterly cold night, under a beanie, having started 35 of Arsenal\u2019s previous 37 Premier League fixtures. After the match he praised his teammates on social media, writing: \u201cThis team!!!! We keep going\u201d followed by three heart emojis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arteta says Rice is improving after knee swelling but doubts his availability for Bournemouth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5548,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,1303],"tags":[1305,1304,1307],"class_list":["post-5549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-arsenal-news","tag-bench-selection","tag-benching","tag-collapse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5549","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=5549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}