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Mikel Arteta led Arsenal's final training session before Liverpool on Wednesday morning with three players absent because of injury
Arsenal's injury list continues to decrease with only three players absent from their latest training pictures. The Gunners took part in their final session at London Colney on Wednesday morning before playing Liverpool at Emirates Stadium the following day in a huge Premier League clash.
Manchester City and Aston Villa are in action 24 hours earlier against Brighton and Crystal Palace, respectively. As such, when Mikel Arteta's side get underway against the champions, they will know how many points is needed to increase or restore the gap.
Having their best players fit and available for that clash will help towards that goal with recent returns for Gabriel Magalhaes and Declan Rice hugely important. That was proven in the 3-2 win over Bournemouth as both were on target.
Back fit and available, the duo were looking very focused in the Arsenal training images that emerged on Wednesday. There was concerns that Christian Norgaard was absent, but he was later spotted in the training video uploaded to Arsenal's website.
The summer signing will almost certainly be handed more minutes this month with FA Cup and Champions League games as the perfect chance to rotate. While it was purely by chance that he did not appear in any photos, Riccardo Calafiori and Cristhian Mosquera were absent for good reason.
That is because the two defenders are missing with injury and have been ruled out of Thursday's clash. Arteta has stated they could be back soon, though.
He said: "I think pretty soon they have to go to the last stage of the rehab, I think everything goes well, hopefully very soon they will be available for selection."
Unsurprisingly, both were not spotted in the training pictures that emerged over the last few hours. Despite not being named in the matchday squad that beat Bournemouth 3-2 last weekend, Kai Havertz was captured out on the grass.
Load management was the reason given for his absence at Vitality Stadium with Arteta explaining his thought-process on that decision and future ones he will have to make.
He said: "We are monitoring, obviously his load he has been out for a long time for two different reasons and he's very close, he trained this morning again and hopefully we're going to have him available and the best version of Kai Havertz."
Max Dowman was the third well-known Arsenal star not included in any of the training images with that also because of injury.
Liverpool also look set to be without players on top of Mohamed Salah who is still at AFCON with Egypt. Hugo Ekitike missed the 2-2 draw with Fulham and could be out again having not yet trained, as confirmed by Arne Slot.
The Liverpool boss said: "Hugo has not trained with us until now let's see if he can today,’ said the boss on Wednesday morning. ‘I've said when we played Fulham he wasn't going to be out for long but as games come too fast."
Changes to the starting XI from Arsenal's last clash are expected with Bukayo Saka and Leandro Trossard set to return after cameos off the bench in the win over the Cherries.
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