Mikel Arteta has revealed that Arsenal are ready to sign a number of new players in the upcoming January transfer window following an injury crisis.
Arsenal could be without seven players tonight when they host Monaco in the Champions League, with Ben White and Takehiro Tomiyasu both ruled out with knee injuries. Gabriel, Riccardo Calafiori, Jurrien Timber, Oleksandr Zinchenko and Thomas Partey were all absent from training on Tuesday.
As a result, Kieran Tierney could be in line to make his first Arsenal appearance in 16 months and Arteta has admitted the Gunners will need to strengthen their squad if injury problems do not subside before the transfer window opens.
“This window gives us the opportunity to strengthen the team if we think we need to and we think we have the capacity to do so,” Arteta explained ahead of his side's clash with Monaco.
“We are working on it and just have to assess the situation because it is changing every week. Not for the better at the moment, but I am sure in a few weeks we will be in a better place.”
Although Arsenal's injury problems mean they are set to announce their tenth different defensive combination of the season against Monaco, Arteta is hopeful other players will step up and impress.
“It is what it is,” he said. “Ultimately we have to accept the challenge and its possibilities for other players. In the ideal scenario, we should be in charge of making those decisions because it forces us to make them for the wrong reasons, but because Well, we have to accept the reality and move on.
“I'm very happy with the way we're playing, and the good thing is that the team isn't being conditioned to the point where we have to become a different team. So I'm very happy with that, the way we're playing.” the team is adapting, the way players are making the effort to play in different positions and hopefully the ideal situation will arise soon and we can do what we want.
“We have a lot of joint injuries that are very difficult to predict. For example, we have a number of through-tackles that are again quite difficult to predict. The other one is probably overload: the number of playing minutes.”
“The knock-on effect of not having one or two players available means that it puts more pressure and minutes on someone else. That's not a good change because the consequences and the burden on all players starts to become too high, much higher than what you would expect to want to do, but it is where we are.”
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