With Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal side continuing their preparations for the upcoming clash with Southampton on Friday evening as they look to return to winning ways after two successive draws, it appears William Saliba will not in fact come back into contention before the end of what all Arsenal fans will hope it a Premier League title winning campaign and a bet365 bonus code could potentially still enable late punters to get decent odds on that happening.
The 22 year old eight time capped French international centre half has now missed four games having picked up an injury in their Europa League penalty shootout defeat to Sporting Lisbon back in March, and at his pre Southampton press conference, Arteta said of the player.
“With William we have to wait a little bit more. He is not progressing as quickly as we had hoped. It is a bit delicate.”
Arteta went on to explain that given where the player now finds himself in his recovery from the issue the club are being absolutely certain that he is not being overly pushed as he steps up training work, as naturally, they do not want to do anything that could then make the situation worse and ultimately leave him out of contention for longer.
The bottom line being, that they believe pushing him further right now would be a massive risk as he simply could not take that step up in workload.
Pushed further on whether or not Saliba would make a return to the pitch before the end of what Arteta hoped would be a very successful campaign, he went on to add.
“I don’t know, it’s a bit early to do (predictions). Probably next week we are going to have more certainty. There is some evolution, he is doing more activity, but he is not there yet to start to throw him on the pitch at the level that the sessions demand to compete in this league.”
With 33 games under his belt this season in the heart of their defence, he has undoubtedly played a key part in their success and he will naturally be a loss, even though Rob Holding has stepped in admirably in his absence.
Of more concern right now, with games quickly running out in the 2022/23 campaign, is the club getting back to winning ways, as with draws against West Ham United and Liverpool (in both games they surrendered a 2-0 advantage), it has allowed Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City side to close the gap to only four points – and Arsenal fans will take important note of the fact that City have a game in hand over them, so the gap could well be only a single point in reality.
We will have to see what happens in the remaining games.
Photo by Unsplash