Mikel Arteta had two major injury updates after Arsenal’s win over Ipswich Town, one positive and one negative.
Arsenal had to adapt to life without Bukayo Saka and Raheem Sterling on Friday, with both wingers currently out injured. In their absences, Gabriel Martinelli played on the right, and Mikel Arteta had updates on the two injured players after the game.
First, on Saka, Arteta confirmed the bad news that the 23-year-old has had surgery. Though the procedure was successful, that does likely mean a longer lay-off.
“I would prefer to leave [further updates] to the doctor himself,” Arteta began, before adding: “But he had a procedure. Everything went well. But, unfortunately he will be out for many, many weeks.”
On Sterling, the news was more positive. From the sounds of things, he’s not going to be out for as long as initially predicted.
“The news with Raz, I think it’s better,” Arteta said. “We have to see this week how he evolves. But we expected the knee injury to probably take longer than actually the way the knee is evolving in the last few days.
“So, hopefully that’s good because we need him.”
Saka is now expected to miss a few months of action, with little expectation that he’ll return before mid-March at the earliest.
Most likely, the winger will miss the remainder of the League Cup, more than 10 Premier League fixtures, and the next round of the Champions League, regardless of whether that’s the play-off round or the round-of-16.
That just makes it all the more important that Sterling isn’t out for long, so it’s good to hear that his injury isn’t as bad as feared.
