By Jonny Payne
Arsene Wenger has played down suggestions that Arsenal captain Cesc Fabregas started Wednesday’s match against Barcelona with a broken leg.
Press reports suggested on Friday that the Spaniard may have already sustained a fracture in his leg the previous Saturday against Birmingham, but Wenger quashed these rumours in his pre-match press conference for tomorrow’s match against Wolves.
The Arsenal manager said: “We believe that the injury was from the kick of Puyol for the penalty. There were some suggestions that he played with a broken bone; that is not true. We have two independent doctors with X-rays who clarified the situation that the bone was bruised but not broken before the game.
Wenger added: “He had a test on the morning of the game, he did not have a test on the warm-up and I asked him after the warm-up if he felt perfectly alright and he said yes. He had not a broken bone before the game started…You always have to be open minded but medically he was clear and he declared himself fit, and at some stage you have to trust the players.”
Fabregas started Wednesday’s crucial match at the Emirates just days after suffering bruising to his knee, but Wenger stated that he would never force a player to play
“After the Birmingham game he was bad, he didn’t practice at all and on the day of the game he had a test at The Emirates and he said he felt ready to start and that he feels alright. I would never force anybody to play – we didn’t inject him for example,” said Wenger.
The Arsenal manager added: “He’s very down because it’s so difficult to understand…It was exactly the same place where he got kicked against Birmingham, he got a crack on his bone. He already had a bruised bone before the game and the kick made a little split on it.”
Fabregas will be out for six weeks, ruling him out of the title run in, but Wenger has insisted the 22 year-old will be fit to join up with Spain’s World Cup squad.
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