Gabriel Magalhães has been very important to Arsenal this season, despite facing a few injury challenges that have raised concerns among fans. His performance in yesterday’s match against West Ham showed how important he is to us, even scoring Arsenal’s first goal before being withdrawn at half time.
“It was related to the previous injury that he had in Lisbon,” the Arsenal boss told reporters. “Obviously he did great to be part of that but with that result and with the niggle that he’s feeling, we decided to take him off.”
Considering our 4 goal blitz in the first half, it was right that Mikel Arteta made the strategic decision to substitute Gabriel at halftime as a precautionary measure, and it is good that that the Gunners wanted to ensure Gabriel’s long-term health rather than risk further injury.
But I am very hopeful that our highest-ever goalscoring defender will recover in time for our crucial clash against Manchester United in midweek, as he watched the rest of the game and was up and celebrating with his team-mates at the end of the match.
Also after the game, Big Gabi took to Instagram to celebrate our win, and on one of them he simply wrote: “Thanks God,” followed by a love heart. That fills me with hope that he is not overly worried about his injury.
But another good thing to come out of his injury worry is that Jakub Kiwior played for the whole of the second half, and he and lots more of our backup players had to come on and do the job and impressed Arteta. The boss said: “Very important, we had an issue with Gabi, we have an issue with Ricky as well.
“Yesterday we lost Thomas and Mikel and Myles which was very bad news, but what I’m really happy about is Jakub has to come in, he does really well.
“Alex the same, Jorginho, I thought he was exceptional today as well. That’s the level, every three days we’re going to need everybody at their best and it’s a good sign that the team can do that.
That all sounds very positive to me, don’t you think?
