Arsenal, the Premier League leaders, were forced into a last-minute change to their starting line-up on Saturday when Bukayo Saka withdrew before the match at Elland Road.<\/p>\n
Saka had travelled to Leeds and was given the nod on the right wing, with plans for him to wear the captain’s armband and resume his usual role on Arteta’s right wing. Those plans changed in the pre-match moments when the winger registered an issue while warming up.<\/p>\n
The club confirmed Saka \u201cfelt something\u201d while preparing for the game at Elland Road. The team did not disclose any further specifics about the problem, but it was sufficient for the England international to be deemed unavailable for selection.<\/p>\n
The absence arrived at short notice and produced a late alteration to the XI, with Saka replaced in the team sheet just minutes before the final whistle. Arsenal made the call after the issue presented itself during the warm-up, and the club determined the player could not take part.<\/p>\n
That decision removed an influential figure from the side for a fixture in which Arsenal arrived as league leaders. The club offered no further detail on the nature of the injury, only that the matter prevented Saka from featuring on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n
The late withdrawal underlines how quickly pre-match circumstances can force tactical and personnel changes. Arsenal moved to adjust their selection immediately after the issue emerged during preparations at Elland Road, leaving supporters and staff to await further updates on the player\u2019s condition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saka withdrew from Arsenal’s starting XI at Elland Road after he “felt something” in the warm-up…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6365,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,172],"tags":[1359,826,1006],"class_list":["post-6366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-epl","tag-arsenal-injury","tag-bukayo-saka","tag-captaincy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6366","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=6366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}