Arteta 'very worried' over Saliba injury

Mikel Arteta admitted he is "very worried" about William Saliba's injury after the defender missed their draw with Aston Villa.

The Gunners gave up a 2-0 goal lead in their 2-2 draw with Unai Emery's side, losing ground on leaders Liverpool, who sit six points clear with a game in hand.

Since the start of 2022-23, Arsenal have conceded 0.8 goals per Premier League game when Saliba has played (85 matches), compared to 1.7 per game when he has not featured (13 matches).

Their win rate also drops from 71.8% with him in the side to 38.5% without, only earning 1.5 points per game if he is missing.

Arsenal already have a lengthy injury list, including Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Jesus, while they were also without Riccardo Calafiori, Ben White and Takehiro Tomiyasu for Saturday's match.

Arteta, who said before the Villa game that Saliba was missing with a "minor issue", confessed he does not know the full extent of the Frenchman’s injury.

"I think [on Sunday] we will have more information, we will have another test on him, and we will be more clear about that," Arteta said.

"Yeah, for sure [there is concern], especially with the numbers that we have in the squad and looking at our bench - very worried."

Given their current injury problems, Arteta was frustrated with their current squad depth, lamenting the fact he could not call on more players from the bench after Villa had pulled level.

He compared their situation to title rivals Liverpool, who made five substitutions against Brentford earlier on Saturday, including calling on Darwin Nunez, who scored a stoppage-time double to earn a 2-0 win.

"There are moments, and obviously they [Liverpool] managed to do that [win]," Arteta said. "They made the subs, and the subs made the impact and changed the game.

"On our side, it was the opposite, even after conceding the two goals very close to each other. The danger was that I knew half the team could go downhill because we were physically drained."