Hincapie and Zubimendi ruled out of Lille clash as Arsenal await scans

Piero Hincapie and Martin Zubimendi will miss Arsenal’s Champions League clash with Lille after both suffered ankle injuries in training. Further scans are needed before the club can set a recovery timeframe, leaving their availability beyond the Lille match unresolved.

The injuries came in a session after Arsenal’s win over Leeds. Mikel Arteta said the work was planned for players who had not played enough minutes, with the aim of maintaining rhythm while allowing the squad to take a recovery day on Sunday.

“In two very unfortunate actions, we lost two players,” Arteta said. He confirmed both injuries were to ankles and described losing two players in the session as “far from ideal”.

That leaves Arsenal with two additional absences at a busy point in the season. The club are second in the Premier League with 15 points from six games, and Arteta said the team are playing every three days. Their next league fixture is away to Nottingham Forest on Sunday 18 October at 16:30 BST; the scans will determine whether Hincapie or Zubimendi could be available after Lille.

Arteta rejected the idea that avoiding training would prevent injuries without a cost. Players short of match minutes still need sessions to keep their rhythm, he said, warning that otherwise they may lack impact when called upon. He added that an injury of this kind had not happened in his seven years at Arsenal, although injuries had occurred in other training sessions.

William Saliba is not an immediate solution to the defensive shortage. The defender has been working on grass for more than a week, but Arsenal are still managing his workload, repetitions and consecutive sessions. Arteta hopes to start bringing him into team training over the next few weeks, but would not commit to a return after the November international break. “We’re still talking about weeks,” he said.

The immediate task is to face Lille without Hincapie and Zubimendi, while keeping Saliba’s recovery on its own timetable. Arsenal’s five wins and one defeat in the league have put them second, but the next stretch will test their ability to adapt without assuming their injured players will return quickly.