Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta faced the media ahead of his side’s Europa League clash against Dundalk on Thursday.
The Gunners started their European campaign last week with a hard-fought win against Austrian giants Rapid Wien. Arteta is under a fair bit of pressure after back to back league defeats to Manchester City and Leicester.
Arsenal will go into the game against Dundalk as the favourites, but their real test comes on Sunday. The Gunners head to Old Trafford to face Manchester United where a win is an absolute necessity.
Arteta would have ideally liked to rest a bunch of his players in tonight’s game, but he is short of players at the back. David Luiz, Pablo Mari, Rob Holding and Calum Chambers are all ruled out while Sokratis Papastathopoulos has been excluded from the squad.
Gabriel Magalhaes, Shkodran Mustafi and Willian Saliba are Arsenal’s only available starters, but the latter, like Sokratis, is not included in the Europa League squad; something that Arteta claims he regrets now.
Arteta regrets leaving Saliba out of the squad
He told Sky Sports: “I feel really bad for William Saliba. Because we had so many central defenders, we decided to leave him out of the squad which was really hurtful for me to do.”
“I was hoping that Pablo would be back in two weeks but he had a setback and then we don’t have Pablo and we don’t have William when he’s fit and available to play. But when you make those decisions, you can’t always think about every possible outcome.”
“He’s (Saliba) in a much better place. He is feeling a lot more confident around the place, his language is improving and he’s starting to understand much better what we’re doing physically. He’s played a few games with the under-23s which he needed because he didn’t play any football in the last seven or eight months. Things are progressively getting better and better.”
Saliba cannot play tonight as he isn’t a part of Arsenal’s Europa League squad, but Arteta has included him in his Premier League list. Arsenal fans are excited by their manager’s comments about the young defender’s progression and are hoping to see him in action as soon as possible.
Here’s how a few of them reacted on Twitter
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