Martin Odegaard out for another six weeks with knee injury

Injuries to key players contributed to Arsenal coming up short in the title race last season and they have already been without William Saliba (ankle), Kai Havertz (knee), Noni Madueke (knee) and Christian Norgaard (knee) in this campaign.

Mikel Arteta, the Arsenal manager, has said the club have started a programme to try to ease the hamstring issues suffered by Bukayo Saka — who scored for England against Wales last Thursday — but added that finding the root cause of injuries is never straightforward.

“There is a lot of randomness in an injury,” Arteta said. “Sometimes I’ve been with a player that I wanted to put the finger [on] something and I realised three months later that he had a problem with his wife, or he or his kids didn’t sleep for three days, and then he got injured.

“I say, ‘I’ve been scratching my head for one month trying to do that, and then I found out that this was the real reason.’ There are a lot of factors we’re trying to control or predict. But, unfortunately, this is football and life, and it’s not that easy.”

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