Mikel Arteta Gives Update on Saka’s Injury

Arsenal head coach Mikel Arteta says his winger Bukayo Saka will miss “many weeks” due to injury. The English winger suffered a hamstring injury in their last win over Crystal Palace.

The England 23-year-old has scored nine goals and provided 13 assists in 24 games in all competitions this season. The absence of the player will greatly be missed, speaking about it the manager said: “It’s not looking good.”

Arteta also said: “He’s going to be out for many weeks.” “It is what it is. He’s injured, we cannot change it. We’re going to use this time now to help him.”

The Spanish international went on to say: “putting some ideas together” to deal with Saka’s absence and Arsenal had experience in coping without key players having lost captain Martin Odegaard to injury this season.

The manager was asked whether Saka had “torn” something in his hamstring, and he said probably. He said there are a lot of factors. We are looking at everything and what we can do differently.

Arteta said Saka was “gutted” and “really emotional” after discovering the severity of his injury. Asked if the congested fixture list had played a part in Saka’s injury, Arteta replied: “It’s probably more the accumulation [of matches] as people like Declan [Rice] and Bukayo have played over 130 games in three seasons.”