Why 4 Arsenal players are missing the pre-season tour | OneFootball

Arsenal are in Singapore for the start of their pre-season tour of Asia, but there are still a few senior players missing from Mikel Arteta’s travelling squad.

Photo via Arsenal.com

Arsenal took 30 players in their travelling squad to Singapore over the weekend, including seven youth players and most of the first-team squad.

Gabriel Jesus was an expected absentee, with the striker still a long way off fully recovering from his knee injury. New signing Noni Madueke is also not on the trip, with Arsenal officially confirming he’ll join up with the squad in early August after the Asia tour.

Madueke hasn’t had any holiday so far this summer, with Chelsea featuring in the Europa Conference League final and the Club World Cup since the Premier League season ended, as well as featuring for England over the international break. So he needs some time off.

Photo by Angel Martinez/Getty Images

One surprise omission from the squad list is Karl Hein, with the goalkeeper having returned from his loan spell and not having any summer football commitments since he played for Estonia on June 9th.

But Ryan Taylor of the Mirror reports that Hein is currently nursing a thumb injury. The report adds that Hein is also being considered for a permanent sale, with Sevilla keen on him. Between the injury and the possibility of a transfer, joining the trip evidently didn’t make sense.

Arsenal have David Raya, summer signing Kepa Arrizabalaga, Tommy Setford, and Alexei Rojas on tour, so they won’t struggle to fill the spot in the lineup.

Photo via Porto on Twitter

Finally, Fabio Vieira is another unexpected absentee. Vieira also missed the pre-season training camp in Spain, but that made sense given he was recently involved in the Club World Cup.

Given it’s now been almost four weeks since Vieira’s last game at the tournament, there’s no reason why he couldn’t be with the Arsenal squad right now. The required holiday period is only three weeks.

But the Mirror report that Vieira has been given an extended break, presumably because he had such a long 2024/25 campaign.

Previous reports had suggested that Vieira would eventually be involved in pre-season, so the current expectation is that he’ll join the team in August like Madueke.