Mikel Arteta said Riccardo Calafiori’s injury was “not great news” as the defender added to Arsenal’s injury pile-up ahead of the Premier League clash against Liverpool on Sunday.
The Italian hobbled off in the second half of Arsenal’s 1-0 win over Shakhtar Donetsk in the Champions League after landing awkwardly and stretching his leg.
Arsenal will already be without centre-back William Saliba as the France international serves a one-match suspension for his red card against Bournemouth last weekend.
Bukayo Saka was again absent due to a hamstring injury while Martin Odegaard remains out with an ankle injury and is unlikely to return in time for the visit of Liverpool.
Jurrien Timber, Oleksandr Zinchenko and Takehiro Tomiyasu are also on Arsenal’s injury list but Arteta said Ben White’s half-time substitution against Shakhtar was tactical.
“With Ben, it was my decision to take him out,” Arteta said. “He had a yellow card and we’ve played enough with 10 men in recent periods. They had a lot of players on that side, so I didn’t want to take any chances there.
“With Riccardo, he had to come off because he felt something. I don’t know the extent of it so in that sense that’s not great news.”
Arteta admitted his side were tired in the second half against Shakhtar, who could have earned themselves a point were it not for David Raya’s excellent save to deny Pedrinho’s long-range shot in the 92nd minute.
But the Arsenal boss expects his side to recover in time to be “flying” when they host league leaders Liverpool at the Emirates, in what is shaping up to be a crucial clash at this early stage of the season.
“We played two nights ago, with players coming back from internationals, after flying from Brazil and many countries,” Arteta said. “I was expecting a bit of a drop-off. And the fact that we put so much in the first half and didn’t get the distance in terms of the scoreline, we paid a bit for that.
“Then we made life more difficult for us because we started to give the ball away in not the right areas and then it was more open. That didn”t help. But we have now four days. And believe me, come Sunday we’ll be flying. We’ll be in the right place.”
