{"id":628023,"date":"2026-04-24T14:30:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T14:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/628023\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T14:30:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T14:30:09","slug":"arteta-delivers-saka-calafiori-and-timber-update-press-conference-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/628023\/","title":{"rendered":"Arteta delivers Saka, Calafiori and Timber update | Press conference | News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mikel Arteta has said Bukayo Saka and Riccardo Calafiori are all in contention to feature against Newcastle United this weekend.<\/p>\n<p>Bukayo hasn&#8217;t played since our Carabao Cup final defeat to Manchester City, but at his press conference ahead of our game against the Magpies, Mikel was positive about the attacker&#8217;s fitness.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Bukayo [Saka] probably is going to be in the squad, so good news,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have given him some time because there was a moment that he was struggling to sustain the performances because he wasn&#8217;t comfortable at all and we&#8217;ve done that so he had the right treatment, the right space.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He had some time as well for himself and now it&#8217;s the most important part of the season and he&#8217;s back with us.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>When asked if Riccardo and Jurrien would be fit, Mikel added: &#8220;[Calafiori is] probably be in the squad as well. Jurrien not in the squad.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Bukayo has missed five matches since the Carabao Cup final, as well as missing out on international duty with England.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>            <a href=\"https:\/\/www.arsenal.com\/news\/can-we-extend-our-pl-record-against-newcastle?utm_source=arsenaldotcom&amp;utm_medium=embedded-article&amp;utm_campaign=news\" class=\"article-card__wrapper\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><\/p>\n<p>\n         Read more                              Can we extend our PL record against Newcastle? <\/p>\n<p>    <\/a><\/p>\n<p>When asked how eager he has been to return to action, Mikel said: &#8220;He was in great spirit today. You can see that the sun is shining and that he&#8217;s back with the team because he had a different energy.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s been through a tough period. We certainly missed him, and he&#8217;s back with us now.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Calafiori last featured during our Champions League quarter-final first leg win over Sporting.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Italian has made more appearances this campaign than in 2024\/25, and despite picking up injuries in 2026, Mikel is confident he can finish the season strongly.<\/p>\n<p>He said: &#8220;He&#8217;s been much better this season than he was in the previous season. He was really unlucky in the previous season that he had last year as well. He&#8217;s putting so much into it as well, and hopefully we can keep him fit.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mikel Arteta has said Bukayo Saka and Riccardo Calafiori are all in contention to feature against Newcastle United&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-628023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}