Losing Merino in his first training session a 'huge blow' for Arteta

Mikel Arteta said losing Mikel Merino to injury in his first Arsenal training session is a huge blow.

Transcript

00:00He had the incident and he carried on playing and training and at some point we're looking

00:05and it doesn't look right. So that tells you how much he wanted. He didn't want to accept

00:09that that was happening in that moment but actually it's what happened and let's use

00:13the time that we have right now to make sure that he's familiar with everything that we

00:17do, how we live, what we expect of him, how is the team dynamics. He will be in every

00:24meeting as well so we'll use that time in the best possible way and hopefully in a few

00:29weeks he will be ready.

00:30Well it is very disappointing because you can feel the pain of the player as well. We

00:36fought so hard for three months to get the player over the line and the club has made

00:40a huge effort to bring him in and on day one for that to happen it's a huge blow but his

00:46reaction has been exceptional straight away. We signed him for many years, not for a few

00:50weeks and we need to move on. These things can happen, it was very unfortunate but it's

00:55our reality.