New signing Christopher Nkunku was withdrawn from their recent pre-season friendly, while Gabriel Jesus will be sidelined for a few weeks following a surgery.
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With the new Premier League season on the horizon, London heavyweights such as Chelsea and Arsenal suffered big injury blows. New signing Christopher Nkunku was withdrawn from their recent pre-season friendly, while Gabriel Jesus will be sidelined for a few weeks following a surgery. It will be a massive blow for both clubs for obvious reasons. Chelsea are already short in that department, hence Nkunku, who had a good pre-season, was expected to lead the line for them at the start of the new season.
However, Christopher Nkunku was substituted at the beginning of the 1-1 draw with Borussia Dortmund at Soldier Field. New Chelsea manager Mauricio Pochettino is not sure about the extent of the injury, however, he informed that knee discomfort as the reason for it. “The doctors are checking him and I hope it is not a big issue. He fell in the action which was maybe a penalty and he feels something in his knee but we hope it is nothing big,” he was quoted as saying by the club’s website after the match.
He added: “We hope he can be back quickly with the team. We need a few days to assess him.” Pochettino also did not want to blame the pitch as a factor in the injury suffered by the Frenchman. “We took some risks because the pitch is not perfect because the facilities are used for a different sport. We won’t blame the pitch for the injury though. For me, it was bad luck,” he elaborated.
Meanwhile, Arsenal supporters were dealt with a major blow after it was revealed that their club striker Gabriel Jesus will miss the start of the new Premier League campaign. On Wednesday, Arsenal registered a penalty shoot-out win over Monaco to clinch the Emirates Cup. In the post-match, Mikel Arteta informed that the versatile Brazilian forward will be out for a “few weeks” after undergoing a “procedure.”
“Unfortunately, he has had a little procedure this morning, he had some discomfort in his knee that has been causing some issues and they had to go in and resolve it. It’s not something major, but he’s going to be out for a few weeks I think,” Arteta, quoted as saying by arsenal.com, said after the match.
The Arsenal manager then went into detail about the discomfort he has been feeling for a while now. “Yeah, it’s a big blow because we had him back to his best, especially with the way he played against Barcelona, and he was in good condition, and we’ve lost him. He’s been feeling some discomfort in the last few weeks, we had to look at it and we had to make a decision and the best one is to protect the player and get him back as quickly as possible, so we decided to do it,” he explained.
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