Football
Mattias Karen, Arsenal correspondent 8y

Arsenal's Tomas Rosicky may miss 3 months, Danny Welbeck return close

LONDON -- Tomas Rosicky will be sidelined for up to three months with his latest injury, Arsene Wenger said on Friday, but the Arsenal manager still hopes to see the midfielder play for the club again.

Wenger also said Danny Welbeck is about three weeks away from returning to first-team action, but will play with the under-21s on Friday in his first game since April.

Rosicky, 35, damaged a tendon in his thigh just minutes after coming on as a substitute against Burnley in the FA Cup on Saturday -- his first appearance of the season after recovering from a serious knee injury.

That could well have been his final appearance for the club, as the veteran is in the last year of his contract and may not return to fitness before the end of the season.

"I hope not," Wenger told a news conference. "I don't want to be dramatic, because he suffers enough at the moment."

But the Arsenal manager acknowledged that the injury "is quite a serious one."

"The good news we have is that apparently it will not need surgery," he added. "It's a partial rupture of his tendon. But how long does it take, two months to three months, we don't know. At the moment we are all of course shocked, and he is the most shocked. We have to be patient and hope that it was not his last game."

In an interview with Arsenal's website, a visibly downcast Rosicky said it's been a difficult thing to accept.

"The physios and fitness coaches did a good job in putting me back on the pitch. But unfortunately, one moment put me back to the sidelines again," he said. "Unfortunately I have a quite significant thigh strain and I will be out for a while again. It's a very tough pill for me to swallow right now. I worked very hard for that moment, and it was very quickly gone."

Meanwhile, Welbeck, 25, is stepping up his recovery from a long-term knee injury and will play for Arsenal's U21s on Friday against Brighton.

Wenger said the forward, who has been sidelined since the end of last season, will probably need a couple more matches under his belt before being ready to return to the squad, either with the U21s or a game organised internally.

"I believe he needs to play two or three games before thinking about coming back in the first team," Wenger said. "He hasn't played for 10 months basically, so we need to be a bit patient with him.

"He has a good basic fitness, but after it's about competitiveness, decision-making. And he has to get used to that again. But I think in the next three weeks he should be available."

Arsenal play Bournemouth on Sunday looking for their first league win in five matches, a stretch that has seen them drop from first to fourth in the standings. The Gunners have not scored in their last three league games, but Wenger dismissed suggestions that Arsenal fans should be hitting the panic button.

"We played 0-0 at Stoke, which was not a shame because Stoke are quite strong at home, and against Chelsea we played with 10 men, and that makes a game against a good side very different," Wenger said.

"And against Southampton we created the chances and we couldn't finish them off. So I believe overall we don't need to be alarmist, because the quality of our performances was there in every single game. And I think we should take a lot of encouragement from that, even if sometimes in the recent games we didn't get the results we wanted."

Title rivals Leicester and Manchester City play each other this weekend, meaning a win for Arsenal at Bournemouth would see them make up ground on at least one of the two clubs.

But with Wenger also counting Tottenham and Manchester United as title challengers, he said they can't be thinking about other teams' results at the moment.

"We have to look at the facts as they are: we haven't won for four games. So overall we want to come back to winning before we look at the results of the others," Wenger said. "Look at yourself, and come back to what you want to do, which is win your next game."

While Wenger's team have struggled to score lately, former Arsenal striker Benik Afobe has netted three goals in his last three games since joining Bournemouth from Wolverhampton Wanders in January.

Afobe came up through the youth ranks at Arsenal but never made the first team under Wenger, and could come back to haunt his former club on Sunday.

"Benik is quick, sharp, strong as well and has good movement in the box, but we are used to facing this kind of striker in the Premier League," Wenger said, adding that the striker suffered from having players like Robin van Persie ahead of him in the pecking order at Arsenal.

"Overall, you educate people to influence their lives and give them success, that's what we do. When they do not manage to play for us, if they can play somewhere else we are of course very happy for them," Wenger said.

"I believe Benik Afobe has done extremely well, even beyond the expectations of many people. That's great, that's down to him, and congratulations to him."

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