Arsène Wenger has said Theo Walcott will be out for a “fraction longer” than the international break with his calf injury, meaning that it could be December before he returns to action.
Walcott suffered the problem shortly after coming on as a substitute for Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain in Tuesday’s Capital One Cup defeat by Sheffield Wednesday, with his team-mate having damaged his hamstring in the early running.
Oxlade-Chamberlain, Wenger said, would be back after the upcoming internationals – Arsenal play at West Bromwich Albion on 21 November in their first game after the break – but Walcott is expected to remain on the sidelines. The injury is a blow, given that Walcott had found rhythm and form in a central striking position.
“I believe the quickest back will be Oxlade-Chamberlain and Walcott might be a fraction longer,” Wenger said. “Both are out for tomorrow’s game [at Swansea City] and until at least after the international break, so they are out as well for England. My gut feeling is one will be 20 days [Oxlade-Chamberlain] and one will be longer.
“There is always a question we have to answer when we have injuries. We have to analyse every single case and every single exercise, although I think you also have to not over-analyse when players are injured. When a player is injured, they are injured, this has always happened. We have not had too many muscular injuries but it is post-international games [when] we get all these injuries. Is it linked with that? I don’t know.
“We have players every year who play 50 games and some who play less games because they are more injury prone. Sometimes, you know ideally you have to rest a player because he has given a lot but if he has played extremely well in the game before and you have won and the player says he feels perfectly all right, it is difficult to say: ‘You don’t play’.”
Wenger has told the winger Serge Gnabry, who is on a season-long loan at West Brom, that he must knuckle down and win the trust of Tony Pulis. The West Brom manager has played Gnabry only once in the Premier League – for 12 minutes as a substitute – and given him two starts in the Capital One Cup. Pulis says the 20-year-old “just hasn’t been at that level to play games, having come from academy football”.
Wenger said: “I heard that Tony Pulis is not happy with him, so he has to change the opinion of Tony Pulis. I think that Serge Gnabry has the quality to play in the Premier League. He has shown that. It’s good that he faces this kind of battle because it will make him stronger, if he turns the opinion of Tony Pulis around. I hope that he’s facing the challenge and is putting the effort in.”