Rice, Zubimendi, Saliba and Odegaard INJURY UPDATE | Mikel Arteta | Leverkusen v Arsenal

Football

Year2026

Duration10m

Watch Now

7.7

Mikel Arteta speaks to media ahead of Arsenal's Champions League Round of 16 clash away at Bayer Leverkusen. The Spaniard gave updates on a host of players who were doubts going into the game. TIMESTAMPS 00:00 - Intro. 00:06 - You know what’s at stake, no margin for manoeuvre. 00:29 - Odegaard: Out. 00:35 - Trossard and Calafiori: We’ll see. 00:48 - Gabriel and Saliba: Yes. 00;51 - Rice and Zubimendi: Yes 01:05 - Take it game by game and earn the right to win. 01:44 - Lewis-Skelly in UCL: Every season is different. He’s had good moments. Sometimes good form of teammates but he’s doing well. 02:27 - Established yourself?: I think so. You need to perform on the day. 02:49 - Mentally preopared: Yes. When I joined a big part of the team hadn’t played in UCL. Now time to perform. 03:18 - Lessons learned?: You learn about the things you do well and things you can improve. You have to apply your learnings in that moment. 03:59 - talk about Quadruple?: We know about the difficulty. We’re going from competition to competition. 04:34 - Havertz at Leverkusen: Not too much. With the amount of games we have we didn’t have time to analyse. I spoke to him, spent 10 years here, incredible culture. A lot of learnings. 05:!8 - Best condition?: Three weeks of preparing. 05:48 - Managing him: He never had a muscle injury, but then he did his hamstring and knee. These things happen but if there’s a player to deal with it it’s Kai. Now to enjoy all the work he’s put in. 06:58 - Slaps with Rice, camaraderie: Bit of banter and fun. 07:16 - It’s the interaction we have with the players. They know how muhch we care about them. The better the connection the more likely to achieve what we want. 07:49 - Togetherness: So much happens everyday. We have a fantastic group of players. 08:40 - Players to write story?: I live in the present with optimism and try to inspire my players in the same way. The important part is coming now. 09:20 - Xabi Alonso advice?: Not spoken much. But what he did here was historic and unique. We h