The Arsenal squad have been put through their paces in training at London Colney ahead of the Juventus friendly on Saturday as the Premier League restart looms
Arsenal’s preparations for Saturday’s friendly against Juventus are now complete with Mikel Arteta and his coaching staff putting the squad through their paces in training.
It’s back to the freezing cold temperatures in the UK for the Gunners this week following a warm-weather training camp in Dubai which also included friendlies against Lyon and AC Milan en route to claiming a piece of silverware ahead of the Premier League season restarting in 10 days’ time.
With the Juventus friendly now the focus for Arteta, images from Friday’s training session have been released and the likes of Bukayo Saka, Oleksandr Zinchenko, Takehiro Tomiyasu, Gabriel Martinelli and Emile Smith Rowe were among the senior Arsenal players not pictured.
Whether that means they’ll play no part against the Serie A giants remains to be seen as their absences, based on what has happened with team selections so far this season with Zinchenko and William Saliba, for example, doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve been ruled out already.
For the rest of the Arsenal squad – including Rob Holding, Matt Turner, Thomas Partey, Cedric Soares, captain Martin Odegaard, Eddie Nketiah and youngsters such as Lino Sousa, Ethan Nwaneri and Matt Smith – it was straight to work and below is what else football.london spotted from the session.
Ahead of the session, the Arsenal players simply couldn’t resist a snowball fight. Right in the thick of the action was Ben White and at one point he took advantage of Mohamed Elneny being in a perfect position as he aimed a snowball at his teammate who was slightly crouched down attempting to build one of his own.
From there, the squad appeared to split off into teams. On one side it was Cedric Soares, Marquinhos and Fabio Vieira as they set up camp behind a bush and were responsible for a number of snowballs being pinged about all over the London Colney training site.
Ramsdale return
Whilst there was no sighting of Saka from the session, Aaron Ramsdale was spotted in an Arsenal training session for the first time since England lost in the World Cup quarter-final against France six days ago. Reunited with Matt Turner and Karl Hein, it now means Arteta has all three of his senior goalkeepers available for selection.
Having not played a single minute for the Three Lions in Qatar, the Gunners’ No.1 looked delighted to be back with his teammates and perhaps there’s a good chance he will be in the squad to face Juventus.
Classic Tierney move
It is a well-known fact that no matter the weather conditions, Kieran Tierney‘s training attire simply doesn’t change. With everyone else opting to wear as many clothes as possible considering the freezing temperatures making things a lot more difficult, the Scot stayed true to form.
Instead of opting to put on a jumper or even copy the likes of White, Gabriel Magalhaes, Reiss Nelson, Hein, Nketiah or Arteta by wearing a hat during the training session, Tierney stuck to his tradition of a t-shirt and shorts.
