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Emery offers positive update after Arsenal star picks up injury at Blackpool

By mac14 on January 6, 2019

Unai Emery has offered a positive update on Laurent Koscielny after he was forced to pull out of Arsenal’s FA Cup win over Blackpool with a back injury.

Koscielny returned to action during the latter stages of 2018 following eight months on the sidelines with a ruptured Achilles and he’s been slowly getting back to full match fitness in recent weeks.

The Frenchman was named in the starting eleven to face Blackpool in the third round of the FA Cup at Bloomfield Road on Saturday evening with Koscielny due to line-up alongside Stephan Lichtsteiner, Sokratis and Sead Kolasinac.

However, the 33-year-old was forced to withdraw from the match at the last minute after suffering a back injury in the pre-match warm up. Carl Jenkinson was drafted in as a late replacement with Lichtsteiner moving in alongside Sokratis in the middle of the back four.

Speaking after our 3-0 victory, Emery said Koscielny’s injury wasn’t serious and he hoped the centre-back would recover over the next week ahead of our Premier League trip to West Ham next weekend.

Emery told Arsenal.com:

on Laurent Koscielny…
Yes [it’s a back problem]. I hope it’s not bad. He has one week to rest and to work, thinking about the next match against West Ham. I hope he’s going to be OK for the next matches but before the match, he felt some pain in his back. We decided it was better for him to not play. At the moment, with our problems at centre back, it meant we were able to look at different players in different positions. Today that was Lichtsteiner, who played with very good commitment and concentration to help us at centre back with Sokratis.

With Rob Holding out for the season and Dinos Mavropanos, Shkodran Mustafi and Nacho Monreal all struggling with recent injuries, the last thing we need is another injured central defender so let’s hope Koscielny is back in action soon.