Jurrien Timber injury: Mikel Arteta offers update after Arsenal signing limps out of Premier League debut

The Gunners face an anxious wait over their £34m summer arrival after he was hurt in Saturday’s win over Nottingham Forest
George Flood13 August 2023

Arsenal will assess Jurrien Timber after the club’s new signing was injured on his Premier League debut on Saturday.

The versatile Dutch defender, a £34million July arrival from Eredivisie giants Ajax, started alongside fellow new signings Declan Rice and Kai Havertz once again in a delayed home kick-off against Nottingham Forest, with another fresh recruit watching on from the stands in Brentford goalkeeper David Raya.

However, Timber’s afternoon lasted only 50 minutes amid concerned faces at the Emirates Stadium as he limped off with an apparent knee or calf issue, replaced by Takehiro Tomiyasu.

It was a key blow on an otherwise encouraging opening day for Arsenal, who, after the game was delayed by 30 minutes due to e-ticketing issues, saw Bukayo Saka net a scorcher after Eddie Nketiah’s deflected opener before surviving a late scare after Taiwo Awoniyi’s consolation off the bench for Forest to win 2-1.

Injury blow: New signing Jurrien Timber limped out of his Premier League debut with Arsenal
Getty Images

Arteta is already without the likes of Oleksandr Zinchenko, Folarin Balogun, Reiss Nelson and Mohamed Elneny to start the season, while key striker Gabriel Jesus is also currently sidelined after undergoing a knee procedure last week.

The Spaniard will hope that Timber’s setback is nothing serious as he confirmed that there was no reason to take off the Netherlands international at half-time.

Arteta said: “The doctors looked at him and they were happy for him to continue, he was as well. Straight away in the first action of the second half he made a movement and it was a bit funny.

“We took him out straight after and now we have to assess him and see what he has.”

One selection surprise that Arteta sprang against Forest was in defence, with midfielder Thomas Partey picked at right-back and Ben White named in central defence with William Saliba and Gabriel only a late substitute.

Quizzed as to if leaving the Brazilian, a regular starter last season, on the bench was merely a tactical decision, Arteta said: “Yeah, we expected a game that actually happened and we needed somebody else in midfield to do what we did best, to have more fluidity and occupy certain spaces in relation to how they’re defending. It worked really well.”

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