Arsenal Team News: Wenger Confirms Fresh Injury Blow, 7 Men Ruled Out Of FA Cup Tie

Arsenal will be looking to book their place in the fourth round of the FA Cup when we take on Nottingham Forest at the City Ground on Sunday afternoon.

Ahead of the game, Arsene Wenger has been speaking to the media at his pre-match press conference this morning and he’s offered a team news and injury update.

The Gunners boss revealed another injury blow with the news that midfielder Granit Xhaka has been ruled out of the trip to Nottingham this weekend with a tight groin.

The Swiss international completed the full ninety minutes against Chelsea on Wednesday night but it seems he picked up a knock during that game and won’t feature this weekend.

However, the injury doesn’t sound too serious so hopefully Xhaka will be back in contention for the first leg of our Carabao Cup semi-final with Chelsea next week.

Elsewhere, none of our other injured players are ready to return so Sead Kolasinac remains out with an ankle injury while Olivier Giroud is also still sidelined with a hamstring issue.

Nacho Monreal isn’t expected to return for another two weeks due to an ankle injury while Laurent Koscielny is still feeling the effects of his Achilles after aggravating the problem last weekend.

Aaron Ramsey is also out this weekend as he continues to recover from a hamstring injury and while Wenger didn’t name him, Santi Cazorla is another player on the injury list as he’s still working his way back from a serious Achilles problem.

Wenger told Arsenal.com:

on the latest team news…
Basically we still have the injuries we had for the Chelsea game, nobody will come back.

on who will miss out…
So you have Kolasinac, Monreal, Giroud, Ramsey, Koscielny all out. It will be a similar group of players. Some of those who played against Chelsea will play again, but also some fresh players will come in. From Wednesday, we lose Xhaka who finished with a tight groin.

on how much he will rotate…
I will rotate a little bit because we have also come out of a very high-loaded period. We played three big games in six days and twice we were away, followed by a big game at home. We have to keep our level of focus, of urgency, because the third round is very difficult especially when you play away from home against a Championship team. We play on Wednesday again, so I have to rotate a little bit.

So the boss has plenty of injury worries to contend with this weekend but he’ll still rotate ahead of the Chelsea game with the likes of David Ospina, Per Mertesacker, Mathieu Debuchy, Mohamed Elneny, Francis Coquelin, Theo Walcott and Danny Welbeck all expected to feature against Forest.