Mikel Arteta has now got a much larger Arsenal squad available to him than he did last season. Having to leave as many as eight players out of the potential side that could have been included to play Manchester United, it truly shows how the team has changed over the summer.
Of course, there is hope that several of these will find solutions to leave the club before the end of the window. Reiss Nelson, Oleksandr Zinchenko, Fabio Vieira, Karl Hein, Albert Sambi Lokonga and the injured Gabriel Jesus were not involved.
Jakub Kiwior, too, has been previously included but now sees links away from the club emerge after the arrival of Cristhian Mosquera. Max Dowman made the trip with the group but was left out of the matchday squad, taking the total to eight.
However, a ninth player would have almost certainly been included after making his summer switch to the team in the window. Christian Norgaard has featured heavily across the pre-season but was not in any of the training pictures or videos, leading to speculation that he was injured.
football.london approached the manager for comment at the end of the press conference, to which he replied: “He had a little thing, the medical staff will update. He wasn’t able to play today.”
Hopefully, the issue is not too bad, and he can return soon so that the Norwegian can add further depth to the Arsenal midfield. Mikel Merino came on for Declan Rice in the win over United, with Martin Zubimendi completing the match after an impressive debut.
Arsenal will be holding an open training session in front of fans at the Emirates Stadium this week, and so there will be an opportunity to see whether the midfielder is present. If not, the next chance to hear an update will be in the press conference ahead of the weekend.
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