Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has ruled Kai Havertz out of Saturday’s Premier League fixture against Leeds United at the Emirates, having picked up an injury this week.
Arteta, who disclosed this in his pre-match press conference on Friday, always gave injury updates on Ben White, Christian Norgaard, Jurrien Timber and Gabriel Jesus.
“Well, he’s certainly not fit for this match, unfortunately,” he said about Havertz. “We don’t really know yet the extent of it, I think we need a bit more time and some more tests, and after that we will have more clarity about the next steps.
“I prefer not to talk about the specifics, but he’s not fit, as I said, and we need to explore that issue a little bit further and decide what we’re going to do.
“The worst scenario is that he cannot play tomorrow, I would love to have him fresh and available, bringing what he brings to the team but unfortunately, that is not going to be possible.”
Asked how Havertz is handling the situation, Arteta added: “Well, mentally, he’s in a good place because he’s a really strong boy, very committed. He had an incredible recovery from the hamstring surgery. I think he’d never had an injury before; it was the first experience.
“Now, he’s got a setback, let’s see how bad it is, but I’m sure he’s going to deal with it in the best possible way and, as I said, he’s a joy of a kid and hopefully we’re going to have him soon.
“Christian won’t be in the squad. With Ben, let’s see how he reacts and what we decide. Christian will be out for another week or so.”
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“So on Jurrien, we have to manage his load. Obviously he’s been out for a long time again and he comes from a long term injury. We had a long week, we have to manage the load on that, so we have decided to take a little bit of training down, especially that day in the open session.
“Gabi is doing super well. I think he looks in a really good place, obviously it’s a massive injury and we need to come from that in a really strong way, but certainly he’s in the right place and with very strong strides I think.”
There are no injury concerns surrounding Viktor Gyokeres, but Arteta was asked if it was always the plan for the new forward to just play an hour on his debut last weekend.
“Well, it depended on how the game developed,” he explained. “Every game brings different challenges, opportunities. I think the game was very demanding physically, became really, really open for different reasons and we decided, that at that moment, he needed to come off and we had Kai on the bench to come and change the game.
“He’s very, very enthusiastic. He trained really well this week, again. He’s had another week under his belt and he looked in a really good place.”
