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Aaron Ramsey will miss at least 3-4 weeks following his hamstring injury suffered in Arsenal's victory over Bayern Munich earlier this week, according to information provided by Arsene Wenger today during his routine pre-match press conference.
Further, Wenger noted that oft-injured Mikel Arteta hurt his ankle in training yesterday and will presumably not be included in the squad this weekend.
The good news from the press conference is that, other than Ramsey's injury, everyone got through the match versus Bayern Munich without suffering any setbacks.
Now, with all that said, let me go back to the Aaron Ramsey injury and Wenger's comments regarding that. His explanation is curious, to say the least:
Maybe he was overloaded a little bit with games. Ideally I think not him or Bale should have played against Andorra, because they were qualified. But unfortunately I could not decide that. I was in a position after that where I thought I could rest him against Watford. In the end I didn’t do it and of course after, against Bayern, I had not much choice and we got punished. Ideally he should have had a breather, or at Watford. Realistically, the real breather he could have had was against Andorra.
Knowing Ramsey's recent history of suffering frequent hamstring pulls and whatnot, it's interesting that Wenger, in a way, second-guessed his decision to play him last weekend versus Watford.
His point about playing in a meaningless international match is accurate - why play Bale and Ramsey against an inferior opponent in a match that has no impact on Euro qualification? - but the reverse could also be true, as well. Questions, rightfully, could be asked about Ramsey playing at Watford, given that he featured in quite a few matches over a small stretch of time before the trip to Vicarage Road.
Regardless, that aside, Arsenal's in a pretty decent position, health-wise, going into the Everton match. How Wenger shuffles the starting lineup, in the face of Ramsey's absence, remains to be seen.