Bukayo Saka has had surgery and will be out for ‘many weeks’- Mikel Arteta | OneFootball

Arsenal beat Ipswich 1-0 on Friday, but the big news came post-match with Mikel Arteta revealing that Bukayo Saka has needed surgery on his hamstring problem and will be out for longer than initially feared.

Arsenal had hoped to have their Starboy back by the end of February, but the revelation of his operation means he will not be back until at least March, maybe even April.

Arteta said: “He had surgery. Everything went well. But unfortunately he will be out for many many weeks. I said many weeks so I think it will be more than two months. I don’t know exactly how much longer.

“It will depend on how the scar tissue starts to heal, the first week or so, the mobility of that. Let’s see it’s very difficult to say.”

In his place against Ipswich was Gabriel Martinelli, who had a bright start to the game but due to Ipswich’s resolute defence, struggled to create much. “Gabi (Martinelli) needs people around him. He needs to be always in the last line when the ball is on his side,” Arteta added.

“He needs to have people close to him and relationships there because he’s very intuitive. If you isolate him too much he’s going to suffer, especially playing with his natural foot on the right. That’s the things that we can evolve and improve.”

Arsenal have suffered with injuries including long-term problems for Ben White, Martin Odegaard and Takehiro Tomiyasu and with this latest Saka news, they may need to dip into the transfer market. But Arteta did offer some good news on that front: “Raz (Sterling) I think is better. We have to see this week how he evolves. We probably expected the knee injury to take longer than it has evolved in the last few days. Hopefully that’s good news because we need him.”