Arsenal sweating over scan results after forward refused to come off following national team injury

Arsenal are awaiting the scan results of a forward who initially refused to be subbed off after picking up an injury during an international fixture.

William Saliba, Kai Havertz and Declan Rice are among the big names currently experiencing injury issues at Arsenal. Some of their injuries are worse than others.

Further to that, TEAMtalk is aware Saliba is likely to be available before the end of October.

The prognosis of Christos Tzolis, meanwhile, is as yet unknown, after he sustained an injury on Greece duty and was forced out of the 2-2 draw with the Netherlands on Thursday.

The winger will not play against Germany in his nation’s next game, having returned to Greece for scans on his hamstring, reports The Standard.

He is then going to travel back to Arsenal, where the club’s medical staff will perform further tests.

READ MORE: Erling Haaland: Arsenal rocked as favourite to sign Man City striker named

Christos Tzolis refused to come off

Tzolis got through just 18 minutes of Greece’s game against the Netherlands before he was almost literally dragged off.

Indeed, manager Ivan Jovanovic has revealed he had to tell the Arsenal winger to come off as he wasn’t going to do so himself, despite knowing he’d picked up an injury.

The Greece boss said: “How do I handle it? I’m his coach, I tell him to go out and he says ‘I’m not going out’.

“How do I handle it? So, this is something that I characterise as the Greek mentality and all these kids who come to play in the national team regardless of age. I think it was a scene that everyone saw, those who were close.

“I told him to get out, because I suspected that he wouldn’t have done that if he hadn’t felt something. We don’t know how big the damage is today, but I hoped it was just a twitch, something temporary.

“I didn’t have any reason to be honest, because these aren’t qualifiers, they’re the Nations League. First and foremost I wanted to protect the player.

“He didn’t want to stay near me to go out. Instead, he went to defend the corner. And then he went out. These are our players.”