Arsenal Injury News: DEFENSIVE CRISIS

Arsenal are limping off a rather dour performance at Crystal Palace and find themselves facing some major shortages as the fixtures pile up. Wednesday’s Carabao Cup match against Blackpool will be without a lot of the defense fit. The Butcher’s bill is pretty frightening (oh hey, how apt).

Nacho Monreal (hamstring) and Sead Kolasinac (hamstring) are both to be re-evaluated on Wednesday before being committed to play. Hector Bellerin suffered a thigh injury against Palace and is set to miss, only to be re-evaluated for the weekend. Laurent Koscielny remains out because Achilles tendon’s don’t just snap back to health quickly and Dinos Mavropanos remains sidelined with a groin issue which will keep him from training until Novemeber.

That leaves backline options of Stephen Lichtsteiner, Rob Holding, Sokratis Papastathopoulos, Shkodran Mustafi, Calum Chambers and, the ghost of full-backs past, Carl Jenkinson. Not a lot of room for rotation in a game it would be great to use your options.

Welcome to the Injury Crisis of 2018.

As well, Mohammed Elneny is expected to miss two weeks with a thigh injury.

Given the next match is against Liverpool in the League, Arsenal are going to have walk a tricky balance of keeping players fit and ready ahead of a very important match for their top four aspirations. Run anymore players into the ground on a cold October night and things could get very scary for the Gunners.

Happy Hallowe’en, I guess.