Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has acknowledged that injuries are part of the game after Thomas Partey's recent muscle injury.
The Ghana international has just returned from a groin injury that sidelined him for 30 days, missing six games for Arsenal and also Ghana’s final 2023 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier against the Central African Republic.
After returning from the injury, the 30-year-old has only played 16 minutes for Arsenal before playing in Ghana’s two international friendly matches against Mexico and the USA.
Upon his return to Arsenal, Partey didn’t play a single minute before getting injured again.
With people linking the injury to the Ghana friendly games, Arteta has rejected such claims. "I don’t think so. He was coming from a period of absence and he needed minutes. He played with the national team and we try to be always in touch with them.
"Then we had two games with Chelsea and Sevilla very very close and we decided not to load him in the first game to play him in Sevilla, and then that happened in training, so sometimes it’s difficult.
"You try to prevent, if he were to get injured against Chelsea or against City you would’ve said that we had rushed him, but then you rest him and he gets injured, so it’s things that happen in football," he added.