Mikel Arteta cools Arsenal injury fears as surprising Carabao Cup substitutions explained

Mikel Arteta has cooled any fears that Arsenal’s injury crisis has worsened after insisting the changes he made against Preston were pre-planned.

The Gunners have been hit hard by injuries of late and Ben White missed Wednesday night’s Carabao Cup fourth round win.

Arteta played a strong team for the 3-0 victory at Deepdale and fans will have been concerned after both Jurrien Timber and Mikel Merino were taken off at half-time.

But Arsenal boss Arteta said after the game: “It was planned. We have a lot of issues in the backline.

“We wanted to share the minutes, because we lost Gabi [Magalhaes], we lost Ben as well on top of other players.

“We wanted to be competitive but we had to make sure that we protected players because we have a lot of big games coming up.”

Arsenal also took the decision to bring on Bukayo Saka during the victory at Preston, despite the Gunners being 3-0 up at the time.

The winger, who had been out this month with a calf injury before returning to score against Liverpool on Sunday, came on for the final 30 minutes in Lancashire.

“He (Saka) always says: ‘Once I’m here, I prefer to have a few minutes’,” said Arteta.

“As well we wanted to protect Gabi [Martinelli] because he had quite a big impact in the first half, so it worked quite well.”