Arsenal boost as five players return to training after missing end of season through injury

Arsenal have been boosted by the fitness of five players returning to training this week.

Gabriel Martinelli, Mohamed Elneny, Oleksandr Zinchenko, Takehiro Tomiyasu and William Saliba all missed the end of last season but have worked with the Arsenal squad at their training camp in Germany.

The five players are at different stages of their fitness. Elneny, who has been out since January after knee surgery, is the furthest away from being match fit.

Saliba missed the final two months of last season with a back injury and Arsenal are carefully increasing his load following his return to training.

Tomiyasu suffered a knee injury in March and has recovered well after surgery. Martinelli (ankle) and Zinchenko (calf) are both fit again.

Arsenal face Nurnberg in a friendly on Thursday and a decision will be made as to whether any of the five feature, with all of them left out of last week’s behind-closed-doors friendly against Watford.

The Gunners have taken a squad of 30 to Germany, with Kai Havertz hoping to play his first game for the club since his £65million move from Chelsea.

After the match, Arsenal will fly straight back to London and recover before heading off to America on Sunday for their pre-season tour of the United States.

Kai Havertz’s first day at Arsenal

1/12

Arsenal want to wrap up deals for Declan Rice and Jurrien Timber by then.

Rice is currently on holiday in Portugal but has been keeping his fitness up by training with other players, who are also yet to join up with their clubs.

The midfielder took part in a session at Browns Sports Resort in Vilamoura with Portugal internationals Bruno Fernandes, Joao Cancelo and Rafael Leao.

Rice has also been working at The Campus in Quinta Do Lago, which has its own dedicated high-performance centre.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in