Arsenal News: Coquelin out for three months with replacements eyed, Wenger's belief

Arsene Wenger has confirmed that Francis Coquelin will be out for three months.

The Frenchman suffered knee ligament damage in his side's 2-1 defeat by West Brom on Saturday, limping off after just 14 minutes.

Reports suggested that he was due to be sidelined for two months but Wenger believes it's now nearer three.

“It is what we feared, basically. Let's be realistic and count 12 weeks,” Wenger said.

With Coquelin the latest player to be added to Arsenal's growing number of players on the treatment table, Wenger could be forced to spend in January.

And Lars Bender and William Carvalho are both on Wenger's shortlist, according to the Daily Mail.

The report suggests that Germany international Bender and Sporting Lisbon ace Carvalho could be potential replacements for Coquelin.

But with Carvalho under contract until 2018 at Sporting, and Bender until the summer of 2019 at Bayer Leverkusen, the Gunners face a tough task if they want to lure them to north London.

Wenger believes Arsenal still have a chance of qualifying for the Champions League knockout stages. 

Arsenal's 3-0 win over Dinamo Zagreb last night, along with Bayern Munich's 4-0 thrashing of Olympiakos, means the Gunners have to beat the Greek outfit by two or more goals in their last match to progress.

"We have a chance. How big, I don’t know, but we have a chance," Wenger said. "I felt we still had a chance but the result on the night against Bayern was bad for us as well because Olympiakos won in the last minute at Zagreb.

"Then it didn’t depend only on us but now at least we come out of tonight with a chance to make right what we haven’t done up to now.

“What we wanted was to come out of the game with a chance to qualify. We had to do the job and Bayern Munich had to do the job as well.

“Now we just need to win in Greece. If you lead 1-0 they are in a situation where they can lose and we can win it. If you win 1-0 you can win 2-0 as well.”