Is Gabriel Jesus injured? – Or is Arteta being cunningly devious?

Social media detectives have found something strange about Arsenal’s latest training pictures: Gabriel Jesus and Gabriel Magalhaes were not in the pictures of the weekend’s Emirates Stadium training session that were posted online. There are worries that these two are injured, which may be why they weren’t spotted in training.

I would expect most Arsenal fans going to the clash with Nottingham Forest are afraid that they might be without two of their quality players: Jesus, who is injury-prone, and Magalhaes, who got a knock and had to be taken off when Arsenal beat Crystal Palace 5-0. However, Charles Watts thinks that’s not the case.

Watts says Mikel Arteta might be asking the photographers not to take pictures of players who are thought to not be fit on purpose, so there is no need to worry about the two Brazilians, according to him.

The trusted Arsenal journalist thinks the two should have trained this weekend because he thinks they are fit and will play a big role against Forest. He feels Mikel Arteta might be trying to trick Forest’s coaching staff by throwing them off by not hinting at which Arsenal players they’ll be facing.

This way, they won’t know what strategy to use and will be caught off guard. He likens this current situation to that of Oleksander Zinchenko not being in the Dubai warm weather training pictures, which made many think he was hurt and wouldn’t be able to play against Crystal Palace, but he was able to do so and caught Roy Hodgson and his Palace technical bench by surprise.

What did Charles Watts say about the two Brazilians not being spotted in training?

“There’s a few players who people have picked up weren’t involved or weren’t in the pictures. I think Gabriel was one of them, which obviously is a little bit of a worry,” he stated on his YouTube channel.

“I wouldn’t worry too much about it because you just never know when it comes to Arsenal. You think back to the whole training trip in Dubai; in all of that, Zinchenko wasn’t pictured or filmed once in any of those things, and that was clearly deliberate.

“It’s what Mikel Arteta likes to do; if anyone’s an injury doubt ahead of a game, he never wants them in the pictures or in the videos because he wants the opposition guessing constantly.

“He makes that message very, very clear, and so you know there was no Zinchenko at all throughout the training in Dubai in terms of the pictures, and then he rocks up and he starts in the game against Crystal Palace, so just because there’s no Gabriel in these pictures yesterday, it doesn’t mean that he’s not going to be involved against Nottingham Forest.”

So should we believe the two will face Forest?

It would have been a big blow for Arteta to not have Gabriel Jesus and Gabriel Magalhaes in his matchday squad. The fact that they might not be injured should give him peace of mind. Mikel Arteta needs all of his best players to do what he needs to do to win the Prime League and the Champions League.

Darren N

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