Arsenal take on Napoli in the first leg of the quarter-finals of the Europa League on Thursday at the Emirates.
And before this game, Unai Emery is sweating over the fitness of two of his key first-team players.
The first one is midfielder Granit Xhaka who is currently recovering from a groin strain and right now there are mixed reports over his fitness.
The second player who remains a doubt for the Europa League clash is defender Laurent Koscielny who is out with a bruised foot.
And speaking after the Everton game, Unai Emery put question marks over both the player’s fitness and their availability for the Europa League game vs Napoli.
“I don’t know,” he told his post-match press conference.
“Maybe Laurent could’ve come back to play today but yesterday we knew it wasn’t possible. I want to be positive for Thursday but it depends how he’s progressing.
“Xhaka is the same. They are doubts for Thursday. We have players and we know we can produce the performance with all the players.
“When you lose a match, maybe you can look at the players who didn’t play, but it’s rarely the consequence.
“We’ve won matches with other players, other systems, and we need to be efficient in each moment. We need to be consistent like we are a lot of the time, but sometimes we can lose.”
While Unai Emery does have suitable alternatives for both Xhaka and Koscielny is they do cannot be fit before the Europa League game but the manager will surely lose a lot of bench strength in the absence of these two.
Read: Unai Emery explains why Arsenal lost to Everton in the Premier League.
Read: Unai Emery names the only perfect Gunner during Arsenal’s loss to Everton.
