Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta was coy about who will be available for his team’s Premier League match at home to Crystal Palace on Saturday but said the players are recharged from their 13-day break and ready to attack the season’s second half.
His side suffered a third successive defeat in its most recent game on January 7 in a 2-0 defeat at home to Liverpool in the FA Cup third round and sit fourth in the Premier League on 40 points, five points shy of the table-topping Merseysiders.
“We still have a few unfortunately on that (injured) list that we haven’t managed to get back yet. Hopefully, they’re much better,” Arteta told a pre-match news conference on Friday.
“I’m not going to tell you exactly how everyone is individually. We’re touch and go with a few.”
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On the plus side, Arsenal will have had almost two weeks between games when they take the pitch on Saturday at Emirates Stadium, and Arteta said they welcomed the much-needed break which included eight days of warm-weather training in Dubai.
“We feel fully recharged,” he said. “(The break) gave us the opportunity to look at things with perspective. We take positives from the first six months despite recent results.”
“We are recharged, super motivated. We want to attack the second half of the season, we have a lot of ambitions and understand that the team is capable of big things.”
Arsenal’s sudden inability to score recently has threatened to derail a season that looked so promising, with just one goal to show for 61 attempts from its last three games.
Arteta’s team have gone four games without a win in all competitions.
“You have to look at it objectively so that you can dissect the game and understand what happened,” he said of his team’s rough patch.
“There are things that we can improve and do better. Those marginal gains have to be installed and that is what we have been doing over the last few days.”
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