Arsenal injury worry for PSG second leg as Arteta admits he is ‘not confident’ of defender returning | OneFootball

Mikel Arteta says he is not feeling confident that Jurrien Timber will be fit to return for Arsenal’s Champions League semi-final second-leg clash with PSG after missing the defeat to Bournemouth.

Timber was absent from the squad which were beaten 2-1 at home, after goals from Dean Huijsen and Evanilson secured a comeback win for the Cherries following Declan Rice’s opener.

And asked if he was confident Timber would be able to play on Wednesday, Arteta responded: “No. Confident? At the moment no because he wasn’t able to play here and we play in four days.”

Arteta named a strong Arsenal side despite the defeat to Bournemouth, while PSG boss Luis Enrique opted to rest several key players in their loss to Strasbourg having already wrapped up the league title.

“They won the league so they have earned the luxury to do that,” Arteta said. “We haven’t because we still have a lot to do in the Premier League but we are four days (away) and I’m sure we will be fully recovered and at our best to play the game.”

Both of Bournemouth’s goals came from set-piece deliveries and Arteta says he was hugely disappointed with his side’s defending, but urged his players to take out the anger of the defeat on PSG.

He said: “We certainly wanted to create a really good vibe, a positive result would really help us towards Wednesday so what we have created now is a lot of rage, anger, frustration and a bad feeling in the tummy so let’s make sure we use that on Wednesday to have a massive performance in Paris, win the game and be in the final.”

“We scored the goal and after that we had four or five very open situations to score the second one, we didn’t kill it and then after that if you defend the box really poorly, in the way we’ve done it in the two set-pieces we have done, they’re going to punish you.

“A team like Bournemouth are going to punish you. After that, the game becomes rushed, very chaotic, that’s what they want – big spaces. They had more legs than us especially with certain players that were struggling in the final minutes and we weren’t able to get the result that we wanted so I’m very disappointed.

“If you defend the way we did, from very few set-pieces but very poorly you’re going to get punished.”