BREAKING NEWS: During our last preseason,He was our best player but there’s a reason why He has managed to get Four appearance this season despite being in a great form”, Mikel Arteta finally reveals the reason why Ben White have managed to get only four appearance for Arsenal this season
Mikel Arteta has confirmed that a returning Arsenal player recently suffered a setback in his bid to get back to full fitness. The Gunners have had a few key injuries early in the season, with Kai Havertz and Noni Madueke the most notable.
But one player who has been in and out of contention is Ben White, with the defender having featured sparingly, largely sitting on the bench as an unused substitute while he tries to get back to full fitness amid a niggling knee injury that he had surgery to fix last season, White has actually made just four appearances across all competitions so far this season.
Many fans have been curious about White’s lack of minutes this season, and Arteta confirmed on Tuesday: “Yeah, he had a setback and that hasn’t helped, but I think in pre-season he was probably our best player. I think he played every game and he was in great form and we need him, because when Ben is at the level that he can show, he’s a top player for us, a player that drives the team in a different way, gives us a different threat on that flank as well and we need him at his best.”
He added: “It was an injury that kept him out for a few weeks and we have to manage his load and he didn’t have the rhythm to do that. So the reason why he’s not been playing is to manage that. He’s in a good place now, he’s been training more recently and his feeling has been very good and he will have minutes to play.”
Arteta was asked whether White should have had surgery before he did in the autumn of last year, given the defender was playing with the issue for some time. “I don’t know,” he responded. “That’s more for the medical stuff. But obviously, we want to protect our players, we’re never going to expose players if we know that we’re going to damage them for the future. Ben, I mean, he will play with anything.
“You really have to scratch and ask him: ‘Are you ok, are you ok?’ because if not, he won’t tell you because he wants to play every game, which is great. But with that injury, it didn’t allow him to have that consistency, and hopefully now he’s going to get that rhythm because the team needs him.”
White will be concentrating on getting back to full fitness so that he can be an Arsenal starter again, but he will likely have an eye on the summer’s World Cup, a tournament he will want to stay fit for. “There are still a lot of months to go,” Arteta added. “In football, everything can change one way or the other, and if Ben wants to do that, if Thomas [Tuchel] believes he’s the right player to do so, I’m so happy for him. He will have here, I’m sure, a lot of minutes, a lot of opportunities and obviously his background.”
