Tomas Rosicky has become the latest Arsenal player to suffer an injury while on international duty. The midfielder was hurt in the Czech Republic’s 2-1 win over Turkey in Istanbul last Friday and he was unable to play in his country’s 4-2 away win over Kazakhstan on Monday night.
“I couldn’t do any sharp movements, I couldn’t sprint,” Rosicky said, after the game in which the Czechs maintained their 100% record in Euro 2016 qualification. “If I tried to play at one tempo, I wouldn’t make any difference for the team. I’ll come back to London and we’ll see. The doctor said I have something swollen between the muscles.”
Rosicky has made six appearances for Arsenal this season but only one of them has been as a starter – in the Capital One Cup defeat at home to Southampton. The 34-year-old, who has a long history of fitness problems, follows his Arsenal team-mates Mesut Özil and Laurent Koscielny in being diagnosed with injuries during the international break while Danny Welbeck rolled his ankle for England against Estonia on Sunday. Arsenal, though, say that Welbeck’s problem is not serious and he is expected to train as normal on Wednesday.
Özil, the Germany midfielder, is out for up to 12 weeks with a partial knee ligament tear, while Koscielny was stood down by the France Football Federation because of what they said was a long-standing issue with tendinitis in both of his achilles tendons.
The good news for Arsenal is that the long-time casualties, Theo Walcott and Serge Gnabry, returned to full training on Monday. Olivier Giroud, Mathieu Debuchy, Aaron Ramsey, Mikel Arteta, Yaya Sanogo and Abou Diaby are currently unavailable.
