Mikel Arteta kept the door ajar on Declan Rice but removed any doubt about two fellow defenders ahead of a congested run of fixtures. The manager acknowledged a significant swelling in Rice\u2019s knee after the match against Brighton & Hove Albion and said the midfielder missed the midweek session while his joint settled.<\/p>\n
Speaking the day before Arsenal\u2019s trip to Bournemouth, Arteta said: “We haven\u2019t trained yet. Today will be the first training session probably with the players who started against Villa. We will know more this afternoon.” On Rice specifically he added: “We don\u2019t know yet,” and then: “We have another session today, let\u2019s see how he comes through it and how that\u2019s feeling. The Villa game was too early for him.”<\/p>\n
Rice\u2019s presence in training represents a positive sign, but Arteta confirmed that Cristhian Mosquera and Riccardo Calafiori “are both out.” The manager must balance limited rotation with a defence that saw Ben White return against Villa while William Saliba and Gabriel Magalh\u00e3es resumed as a central pairing.<\/p>\n
The schedule ahead is demanding. After Bournemouth, Arsenal host Liverpool in the Premier League next Thursday, then face the FA Cup third round three days later. The club also prepare for a Carabao Cup semifinal tie with Chelsea later this month while the Champions League group stage race approaches its conclusion. Arteta made clear that having Rice available for those matches would be important to the team.<\/p>\n
Rice\u2019s own reaction after the Brighton game added to concerns: during a postmatch conversation with Morgan Rogers the 26-year-old was seen gesturing about the swelling and shook his head while saying the word “terrible.” For now, Arteta confirmed that Friday\u2019s training will be decisive for Rice\u2019s involvement at Bournemouth.<\/p>\n
Arteta also warned about the difficulty of the trip south, noting recent head-to-head history under Andoni Iraola: \u201cWe lost both games against them and we know the difficulty of that,\u201d he said, underlining the test that awaits regardless of selection issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arteta left Rice’s status uncertain after knee swelling; Mosquera and Calafiori confirmed out next<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5627,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,1067,969],"tags":[1305,1066,1047],"class_list":["post-5628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-carabao-cup","category-premier-league","tag-bench-selection","tag-carabao-cup","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5628","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=5628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}