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Football London
Football London
Sport
Tashan Deniran-Alleyne

Tomiyasu absent, Odegaard returns as wonderkids called up to Arsenal training ahead of Liverpool

Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta was keeping his cards close to his chest in terms of player availability for Thursday's Carabao Cup semi-final second leg against Liverpool.

But images from Wednesday's training session at London Colney might just provide a clue as to who will be in contention for the big game under the lights at the Emirates Stadium.

The Gunners haven't been in action since the first-leg at Anfield six days ago after their North London Derby against Tottenham Hotspur that was scheduled to take place last Sunday was postponed.

This is because Arsenal had fewer than the required number of players available (13 outfield players and one goalkeeper) for the big game.

A few days on from that decision and has the situation at Arsenal improved?

Well, Arteta wasn't giving anything away during his pre-match press conference on Wednesday afternoon, opting to keep information on player availability to himself.

"I can’t and I don’t want to because I don’t want to give anything away, I’m sorry," he said. "There are issues and those issues haven’t been resolved that’s why we couldn’t play the last game.

"But as you can understand we want to keep that internal. "I hope there is no more news from tomorrow and the game can be played. This is the way we have prepared."

Martin Odegaard, Emile Smith Rowe and Takehiro Tomiyasu are the three main doubts to face Liverpool for COVID or injury related reasons, but once again Arteta refused to provide an update on the trio.

"Again, there are three cases that for different reasons haven’t been able to play for us in recent weeks," he added. "We are trying to change and raise the level of those players to the best possible level to compete tomorrow."

With that said, as the picture above shows, Odegaard does look set to be available for selection once again.

The Norwegian missed the goalless draw at Anfield last week after testing positive for COVID-19, but has since completed his isolation period and could be the answer to Arsenal's central midfield crisis.

And in a huge boost for the Gunners, Odegaard was spotted in Wednesday's training session, which is a clear indication that he's in contention to face the Reds.

However, from the set of images available to football.london , there was no sight of Tomiyasu or Smith Rowe.

Also present at the club's London Colney training base were the likes of Alexandre Lacazette, Kieran Tierney, Albert Sambi Lokonga, Bukayo Saka, Benjamin White and Gabriel Martinelli.

Jack Wilshere also took part in the session as he continues to train with Arsenal in his bid to find a new club for the second half of the season.

Furthermore, to make up the numbers, a few of the club's most promising players were also called up to the session.

This included Tyreece John-Jules fresh off his loan spell at Blackpool being terminated as he was reunited with Charlie Patino, Salah-Eddine Oulad M'hand and Ryan Alebiosu.

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