Francis Coquelin Injury Update

It appears Arsenal have been handed a huge injury boost with Francis Coquelin’s knee problem not thought to be serious and he could even feature against Tottenham on Wednesday, according to the Mirror.

Coquelin suffered a knee injury midway through the first half of our controversial 2-0 defeat to Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on Saturday afternoon after extending his knee following an aerial challenge.

Although he was able to make it until half-time, he didn’t come out for the second half which led to many believing the injury had forced him to withdraw from the game.

Arsene Wenger hinted as much in his post-match press conference when he was quoted in the Mirror as saying that Coquelin had a ‘little’ knee injury that was, at the very least, expected to keep him out of Wednesday’s Capital One Cup clash with Tottenham.

“It is a little knee injury, ” Wenger said on Coquelin.

“I don’t know how long it will be – certainly not for midweek. I don’t know yet how long.”

Arsenal fans were holding their breath for further news and it seemed our worst fears had been realised when rumours came out of France on Saturday night suggesting Coquelin was set to be ruled out for up to four weeks.

However, it appears those reports were wide of the mark as the Mirror are now reporting today that Coquelin’s injury is NOT serious and suggest that his substitution against Chelsea was in fact tactical.

I personally struggle to believe that Arsene chose to take off our only proper defensive midfielder at half-time shortly after we went down to 10-men with the scores still level at 0-0, but that’s what the Mirror claim.

The newspaper goes on to say that the Frenchman has not suffered any ligament damage and could even be fit to play some part against Tottenham on Wednesday night.

We’ll have to wait and see how much truth there is behind these latest reports but obviously it would be a major relief if Coquelin has been given the all-clear as it would have been a nightmare to lose him for any period of time.

I wouldn’t risk him against Spurs so I’d play either Mikel Arteta, Mathieu Flamini or even Aaron Ramsey in the holding role on Wednesday, but we’ll have to wait and see what Arsene decides to do.