Two players out, two in for the Gunners
London – Arsenal defender Sead Kolasinac and midfielder Ainsley Maitland-Niles have been ruled out until October with injuries, the premier league club has said.
Kolasinac, 25, sustained a left knee injury in a pre-season match against Chelsea earlier this month while MaitlandNiles was substituted in the first half of Arsenal’s 2-0 defeat by champions Manchester City in their opening league fixture.
The 20-year-old has a fracture to his left fibula.
Defender Carl Jenkinson has also suffered a sprain on his right ankle and will be out for up to two months.
“Sead has a left knee injury. We are aiming for him to return to training in October,” Arsenal said.
France international Laurent Koscielny, who missed his nation’s World Cup-winning campaign with an achilles tendon tear, is on the mend and is expected to return to training in November.
The good news for the Gunners, however, is that striker Danny Welbeck and defender Nacho Monreal participated in full training ahead of Saturday’s lea gue match against Chelsea.
Huddersfield Town, meanwhile, must use the positives from last season’s results against Manchester City as motivation to collect at least a point against the Premier League champions in Sunday’s match, defender Florent Hadergjonaj has said.
The West Yorkshire club suffered a narrow home defeat to City early last season but earned a surprising goalless draw against Pep Guardiola’s dominant side in the reverse fixture in May.
Swiss international Hadergjonaj is confident Huddersfield can emulate that performance and recover from their opening 3-0 league defeat by Chelsea last weekend.
“We have shown last year that we can take points off every team,” Hadergjonaj told the Huddersfield Daily Examiner.
“Last year we got a 0-0 result against Manchester City away, so I don’t see why we can’t do that again in the new season.
“We have to keep going and look back at this game and take the positives out of it, and take them into next week’s game against Manchester City.”
‘ ‘ We have shown that we can take points off every team