Arsenal is confident that some of the injury issues that contributed to their request to postpone Sunday’s north London derby with Tottenham will have eased sufficiently ahead of Liverpool’s semi-final second leg visit to the Emirates stadium. The Gunners who played with one man down from around 25th minute into the game at Liverpool’s home ground held Liverpool to a draw.
Mikel Arteta was without at least 14 players last weekend, prompting Arsenal’s appeal to the Premier League. But Martin Odegaard’s coronavirus (COVID-19) isolation is over while a number of players including Bukayo Saka, Takehiro Tomiyasu, Calum Chambers and Cedric Soares were battling small injuries Arsenal hope will have cleared up.
Meanwhile Arsenal are still awaiting contact from Gabon over when Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang will be released to return to London after his country announced he was due to return for medical checks after suffering post-Covid complications. While Arsenal have been in touch with Aubameyang and received confirmation he is fine they have had none with Gabon.
Subsequently, due to the lack of communication, Arsenal insiders also dismissed claims from boss Patrice Neveu that the club had put Gabon ‘under pressure’ to release Aubameyang.
