Arsenal are five points behind leader Leicester going into Wednesday’s Premier League game against Swansea, and three behind Tottenham ahead of Saturday’s North London derby. There are one or two issues with “muscular tightness”, but nobody available then is a doubt for tomorrow.
Advertisement
Arsenal midfielder Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain will miss “six to eight weeks” but does not need an operation, says Gunners boss Arsene Wenger.
Oxlade-Chamberlain was injured during last week’s 2-0 loss to Barcelona in the Champions League round of 16.
It’s a real blow for the England global who now faces a race against time to be fit for Euro 2016, but good news in that he won’t require surgery to fix the problem.
He has just one goal in eight games since returning from a hamstring injury, but Wenger backed the forward to rediscover his scoring touch soon.
“What you want from your fans is to fight together until the last game of the season”, he added.
“At the moment we want to influence our performances and results”.
Wenger, who has guided Arsenal to a top-four finish in each of his 19 seasons at the helm, will find it harder to shake off Merson’s savage attack because it follows criticism from another couple of the club’s former stars in Ian Wright and Thierry Henry. Part of the opinion is always a bit excessive and emotional, but we have to deal with that and I don’t complain about it. “I don’t want to respond to individual criticism”.
“But if Leicester or Tottenham win the league after he said they didn’t need any players then I don’t see how he can keep his job”.
“We want to transform the negatives into positives around us and create even more solidarity”. Everybody has freedom of opinion and I enjoy very much that people care about my future. “Let’s not go overboard”. And when we have a disappointing game, [people must] show that those values mean solidarity, togetherness and fight together. That’s why we have to put criticism in the right place.
Advertisement
“We thought there could be some [surgery] when we saw the MRI but we got positive news”, he told a news conference.
