Speaking in his pre-match press conference, Mikel Arteta has suggested that Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang won’t be starting against Newcastle United.
The Gabonese forward has been out of action with malaria, so as you can imagine, it’s taken him quite some time to get back up to speed after such a serious illness.
Aubameyang managed to come off the bench in the Europa League on Thursday, but Arteta says that he’s not quite at the physical level required to start.
“He hasn’t trained much, he is still not at the level in his physique that he should be to start. We will see again tomorrow how he is. Yesterday he could only play a few minutes but we managed to get him on the pitch, which is great news for us,” Arteta said.
Hopefully it doesn’t take Aubameyang long to get back up to speed.
The one-time Golden Boot winner is undoubtedly one of Arsenal’s most important players, so having him back fully fit will of course be a massive boost.
Arsenal have a massive game against Villarreal coming up, so we can only hope that Aubameyang is back at 100 per cent for that match.
Of course, whether or not Aubameyang features against Newcastle this weekend remains to be seen, but it seems as though it’s highly-unlikely that he’ll be starting.
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