Arsenal Team News: Wenger Offers Update On Sanchez, Debuchy, Wilshere + More

Arsenal will look to put Saturday’s disappointing defeat to Tottenham behind them when they entertain Leicester City at the Emirates on Tuesday night.

Ahead of the game, Arsene Wenger has been speaking to the media at his pre-match press conference this morning and gave Arsenal.com a team news and injury update with the latest on a number of his players.

The good news is that Alexis Sanchez is back in the squad after missing our last two games with a minor hamstring injury that he suffered during our FA Cup win over Brighton last month.

The boss also confirmed that Jack Wilshere has returned to full training this week but no date has been set for his comeback into the first team as the club will monitor the midfielders situation on a daily basis.

The bad news is that Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain is still two weeks away from returning from a niggling groin problem. The injury has already kept the 21-year-old out of our last three games and he’s now set to miss further fixtures against Leicester, Middlesbrough and Crystal Palace.

The Ox will therefore join Mikel Arteta and Mathieu Debuchy on the sidelines, as Arsene has confirmed that the duo are still nowhere near returning from their respective long-term injuries.

The boss told the clubs website:

on the latest team news…

Alexis will be back in the group and we don’t have any injuries from Saturday. Everybody else looked fine yesterday.

on the boost of having Alexis back…

He’s our best goalscorer and one of our hardest-working players in the team. Physically I think we suffered a little bit on some occasions on Saturday and it’s good to have him back.

on Jack Wilshere…

He’s back in full training this week. I don’t know exactly [how long until he returns], we have to monitor him on a daily basis and see how he develops.

on Arteta, Debuchy and Oxlade-Chamberlain…

They are still [a while] away. Oxlade-Chamberlain is about two weeks.

It will be a huge boost to have Sanchez back as he was sorely missed against Spurs on Saturday, but I’d only start him if he’s 100% fit though, as it’s not worth aggravating the problem. We have more than enough depth in attack to deal with Leicester at home so let’s not rush Sanchez back too soon.

While it was a big disappointment to lose at White Hart Lane, we’ve got a great chance to bounce back quickly and with Liverpool hosting Spurs, and Man Utd and Southampton not playing until Wednesday, a 3-0 win over Leicester could see us move third in the table.