Arsenal injury updates: Jack Wilshere, Bacary Sagna

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger talked a little bit today about why certain players will not be traveling to Asia, a list that includes midfielder Jack Wilshere, who hasn't played in over a year now. Speaking to the club's official website, Wenger said:

“It is impossible to set a concrete deadline at the moment. But it is all OK. He is as quick as we expected him to be. His ankle is good and his knee is good. There is no set-back. It difficult to say ‘it will be this week in September or October’ when he is back in training. He has been out for a year and I don’t want to put any pressure on him.”

...which isn't really saying much of anything, but there it is. It is both "as quick as we expected him to be," implying some kind of timetable, but also "impossible to set a concrete deadline at the moment", which implies no kind of timetable. Jack Wilshere's injury apparently exists in some kind of relativistic spacetime curve where, depending on who is looking at his ankle, things either are progressing normally or are totally obscured by some strange energy field.

In other injury news, Bacary Sagna is recovering from his broken fibula still, and should be getting going by the end of August; Tomas Rosicky won't train for another 6-8 weeks due to his plantar tendinitis he picked up at the Euros (thanks, Euros! you jerks); Emmanuel Frimpong is looking at late September to come back from his ACL tear.

Mikel Arteta and Abou Diaby are both 100% and ready to go, but the lack of Wilshere and Rosicky at the start of the season should be setting off klaxons in everyone's head. If Arsenal are going to go for two months to start the season without a central playmaker aside from Aaron Ramsey, things could get very dicey indeed, as Ramsey's playmaking skills are a bit rough-edged.