Arsenal's preparations for the FA Cup fourth round tie against Manchester City are almost complete.
On Wednesday after Gunners manager Mikel Arteta had previewed the upcoming game at the Etihad Stadium, he and his coaching staff put the players through their paces during a training session at London Colney and there was a sighting of recent arrival Jakub Kiwior.
Unsurprisingly, there were a few notable absentees. The obvious two being Gabriel Jesus and Reiss Nelson who have been sidelined since last month with knee and hamstring injuries respectively, whilst Cedric Soares wasn't spotted with his loan move to Fulham set to be completed before the end of the week.
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Furthermore, Mohamed Elneny also missed training amid fears that he could miss the rest of the season with a knee problem: "There are concerns, especially [because] Mo is a player who never complains about anything," Arteta said in his pre-match press conference. "But let's see."
The good news is that no fresh injury concerns have been reported following last weekend's last-gasp win over Manchester United so for the Arsenal players who are available for selection, as well as a few of the club's most promising youngsters, it was back to work at London Colney and below is what else football.london spotted from the latest session.
Xhaka forfeit?
Granit Xhaka is on course for his best season at Arsenal. After producing the cross which lead to Eddie Nketiah's equaliser against Man United, he's now got eight goal involvements in the Premier League (three goals and five assists) equalling his entire output from the 2017/18 campaign and there are still 19 games to go.
In addition, this week saw the midfielder pick up the Swiss Footballer of the Year award where he made sure to praise Arteta in his speech: "I landed on Monday morning and I'm flying back to London on Tuesday morning. I’ll be training again on Tuesday morning," he said. "Of course I got permission from the coach. I very much appreciate this consent.
"Not every coach does that, because on Friday we’re already playing again in the cup at Man City. It definitely shows his appreciation. But I'm not going to party anyway. Nothing is going on in Switzerland on a Monday evening (laughs). I proudly accepted the invitation and from Tuesday I’ll be focusing on training and the next game again."
Spotted in Wednesday's session, although it would appear that Xhaka was in for some rough treatment as the image above clearly shows his left ear being pulled by a teammate who was not in shot whilst Thomas Partey was making a move for the opposite ear. Perhaps, this was the midfielder's forfeit after losing a challenge in training?
Arteta gets stuck in
Speaking of Arteta, he is very much a hands-on manager. And during this particular training session, he got involved on a couple of occasions. Firstly, the Spaniard put new signing Leandro Trossard under pressure before pulling captain Martin Odegaard's shirt - which in a real game will have resulted in a yellow card.
It wasn't just Arteta that got stuck in either as one image showed his assistant coach Albert Stuivenberg sprinting after Ben White who had a priceless look on his face as he raced away.
Wonderkids called up
A regular feature in almost every Arsenal training session this season are the youngsters that are involved as the likes of Ethan Nwaneri, Lino Sousa, Matt Smith, Reuell Walters, Taylor Foran and Amario Cozier-Duberry have all earned the chance to train with the senior players at some stage this season.
Whether any will be involved against Man City remains to be seen, but Nathan Butler-Oyedeji, Smith and Sousa were those called up for Wednesday's session as they trained alongside Oleksandr Zinchenko, Eddie Nketiah, Gabriel Martinelli, Gabriel Magalhaes and Fabio Vieira.
Marquinhos celebration
Last summer's £3m arrival Marquinhos hasn't had much game time over the past month. In fact, he last made an appearance as a second half substitute in the FA Cup third-round win over Oxford United. Despite this, the Brazilian remains in positive spirits and left his mark in the latest training session in a hilarious way.
Upon a closer look at the image above where Aaron Ramsdale, Trossard, Butler-Oyedeji, William Saliba, White, Tierney and Smith, all pose for a squad photo as they were on the winning team (with Bukayo Saka brilliantly lurking in the background), the 19-year-old is at the front taking a nap for some reason.
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