William Saliba will miss a month with an ankle sprain, per reports out of France. The French papers reported that the centerback is expected to miss the October international break, which runs October 6th – 14th. Saliba apparently has a Grade 2 ankle sprain, which is a 3-6 week injury. He picked up the injury in warmups for the Liverpool match (August 31st) — he tried to play on it but had to come off minutes into the match.
If he is indeed out through that October break, he’ll miss Nottingham Forest,
@Athletic Club (CL), Manchester City, @Port Vale (League Cup), @Newcastle, Olympiacos (CL), and West Ham. That’s a tricky run of matches, one for which you’d really like to have you first choice CB pairing available. Cristhian Mosquera, who came on for Saliba against Liverpool and played quite well, will shoulder most of the workload in the Frenchman’s absence. Both Ben White and Jurrien Timber have played CB (Timber more in a back three than a four), so they’re options as well. The newest signing, Piero Hincapie, might factor into the equation, too. He’s primarily a left-sided player, but he might allow Mikel Arteta to shift things around in an unexpected way.
It must be frustrating for William Saliba, Mikel Arteta, and the club more generally to have so many injuries to start the season after last year was derailed by them. Were not even a month in and already Arsenal have lost Kai Havertz for several weeks and Bukayo Saka for about a month. Christian Norgaard missed the first three matches. Ben White picked up an injury towards the end of the season opener and has been out since. Martin Ødegaard was relegated to a substitute role against Liverpool because of the shoulder issue he sustained against Leeds United. Fortunately, the Arsenal captain has been a full participant for Norway and looks to be fine. And Gabriel Jesus has been out long-term recovering from an ACL tear.
The Gunners spent the summer strengthening the depth at the club and that work is being tested early. That’s better than not being prepared to weather another slew of injuries, I guess!
