Chris Hughton has confirmed that Thomas Partey is carrying an injury after the midfielder did not play in Ghana's draw with Angola.
The Black Stars travelled to the Palancas Negras in their latest Africa Cup of Nations qualifying match on Monday. But Partey was left as an unused substitute, despite playing all 90 minutes of Ghana's win against the same opponents last Thursday.
Despite being without their star midfielder, Ghana were able to fight back from going a goal down to Lucas Joao's penalty to claim a late draw. And Hughton confirmed Arsenal's worst fears after the game by revealing Partey had suffered a knock.
“Thomas has some small issues, a small injury issue and we felt it was too big of a risk to start him," the Ghana boss said when asked why Partey had been left on the bench.
"The strategy defensively was that Angola has some very good technical players, especially in the attacking areas. So we knew that defensively we would have to be good and we would have to be solid.
"But because they're such a good, expansive, technical team, we wanted to use the spaces, utilise the spaces and attack fast. I thought once Angola scored the penalty, it gave us a lift, it gave us inspiration to get back into the game.
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"I think we proved we have big spirit in the team and in both games scoring late goals. We are very happy to have four points from the two games. We wanted to win the game, you have to approach every game to win it."
Partey has been a key player for Mikel Arteta's Gunners this season, but he has missed 37 games due to injury since arriving at the Emirates in October 2020. Those frequent injury issues led to Arsenal sending their own lead performance physio with the midfielder for this latest international break.
Despite those precautions, Partey appears to have picked up an issue, though it is unknown what the extent of it is. Last week Arsenal legend Ian Wright raised concerns that an injury to Partey could derail the Gunners' Premier League title bid.
“You don’t want to lose someone like Thomas Partey for any amount of time. We lost William Saliba. But they seem to have taken the hits up until this point,” Wright said on The Kelly & Wrighty Show.
“That’s one thing people criticised Arsenal for and said, ‘let’s see when you get injuries to your key players’ – we’ve had injuries to all of our main players, and still amongst it. It’s now how they finish off with the pressure that is going to ramp up for these last games with the injuries that may come.
"[Arsenal] believe they can do it because they’ve got to a point where nobody thought they would get to. They still look like they can do it. They are beating teams at home very comfortably. That’s all you can do."
