Arsenal centre-back William Saliba is likely to need surgery on a back injury that could keep him out of action for up to five months, according to reports in the French media.<\/strong><\/p>\n The Team<\/em> claim that the centre-back is unlikely to feature in the first half of the season, having been taken off in the first half of France\u2019s 2-0 defeat to Spain in the World Cup semi-final earlier this week.<\/p>\n Saliba has been carrying<\/strong> the problem since the back end of the 2025\/26 campaign, but he has been managing the pain up until now.<\/p>\n However, things clearly got too much for him against Spain as he collapsed to the floor with just 30 minutes on the clock.<\/p>\n If we take The Team<\/em>\u2018s estimated return date at face value, we are looking at a comeback in mid-December. Of course, there is always a chance that he could be available before then, but in the worst-case scenario, it seems he may not be in contention until just before Christmas.<\/p>\n Between the Gunners\u2019 opening fixture against Coventry City on August 21st and the match at home versus Bournemouth on December 12th, Mikel Arteta\u2019s team will play 15 Premier League games.<\/p>\n They include home matches against the likes of Chelsea and Manchester City, as well as trips to Liverpool and archrivals Tottenham.<\/p>\n In addition, the French international is set to be ruled out for the opening two rounds of the Carabao Cup and up to five Champions League group fixtures.<\/p>\n That means he could potentially be unavailable for up to 22 matches in total if he doesn\u2019t make an earlier-than-expected return to full fitness.<\/p>\n<\/article><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Arsenal centre-back William Saliba is likely to need surgery on a back injury that could…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17948,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Saliba could miss up to 15 Premier League games<\/h2>\n
He will be out for key Arsenal games in other competitions<\/h2>\n
It goes without saying that Saliba won\u2019t be involved in the curtain raiser \u2013 the Community Shield match against Manchester City \u2013 next month.<\/p>\n