Bukayo Saka Forced Off After 10 Minutes in Munich With a Left Thigh Problem

Bukayo Saka was forced off ten minutes into Arsenal’s Champions League match at Bayern Munich on Wednesday with a left thigh problem. He pulled up while playing a pass, with nobody near him, held his left thigh and went straight down the tunnel after a short touchline conversation with Mikel Arteta. His replacement, Eberechi Eze, scored the opening goal in a match that finished 2-2. After full time Arteta said the medical staff are concerned and that the injury does not look good, and no diagnosis or timeline had been published when this piece was written.

What happened to Saka in Munich?

Eight minutes in, Saka played a crossfield pass and went to ground straight after playing it, holding his left thigh, and signalled to the bench that he could not continue. The official match record lists the substitution at ten minutes. Before he left the pitch he spoke with Arteta and gestured toward his left quad, a detail reported by Sam Dean of The Telegraph and carried by Sports Mole. He then went down the tunnel for assessment rather than taking a seat on the bench. The mechanism is the part that worries people. There was no tackle and no contact. Muscle injuries picked up while striking a ball tend to be the kind that need a scan before anyone can talk about dates, which is why the club’s silence so far carries no information either way.

What do we know about the injury itself?

Less than the coverage around it suggests. The confirmed facts are the location, his left thigh, with Sky Sports describing a quad issue suffered as he attempted to play a pass, the minute, and that he could not play on. One report in the United States described the problem as a calf injury. The match record, the broadcast pictures and every other post-match report checked point to his left thigh and quad, and the answer Arteta actually gave names no body part at all. Arsenal had published no medical update when this piece was written. Supporters looking for a return date will not find one here, because nobody reporting honestly has one yet. A thigh strain can cost a player a week or six weeks depending on the grade, and the grade is exactly what a scan establishes.

What did Arteta say after the match?

He said the medical staff are worried, in two separate answers, and he did not dress either of them up. Speaking to TNT Sports after full time, Arteta said the staff are “a bit concerned,” that “a player that has to come off with a really sharp pain is never good news,” and that Arsenal have to “wait and see.” In his press conference he went further, saying “it doesn’t look good at all” while repeating that the club has to wait and see, Sky Sports reports. In his wider comments he said Saka was having a great game when Arsenal lost him and the side had to adapt. That is the whole of the update. Arteta named no muscle beyond the reporting of one, offered no grade and set no date, so anyone putting a number of weeks on this injury tonight is guessing. His press conference before Saturday’s Everton game, and the club’s scan reporting, are where the confirmed version arrives.

Who replaced him, and how did the game go?

Eberechi Eze, and he scored. Eze came on at ten minutes and at 25 minutes he ran onto a Martin Odegaard pass and finished low past Manuel Neuer. The assistant’s flag went up and a VAR check put the goal back on. It was a useful answer from a player who had been taken off at half time in Sunday’s win at Nottingham Forest. The depth point underneath it is sharper: with Christos Tzolis also injured, the only other wide option on Arsenal’s bench in Munich was the 16-year-old Max Dowman, Sky Sports notes. Bayern levelled at 35 minutes, Alphonso Davies finishing a Harry Kane pass, and went ahead at 61 minutes when Kane converted a penalty given for a handball by Jurrien Timber. Kane’s goal made him only the second player, after Cristiano Ronaldo, to score in 10 consecutive Champions League games, a record line this site tracks in the Champions League goals records. Arsenal levelled again at 82 minutes, Declan Rice driving a low finish past Neuer after a passing move involving Noni Madueke and Viktor Gyokeres. The final score was 2-2, per Arsenal’s own match report. The draw avoided a first defeat in 14 league phase or group stage games and keeps Arsenal unbeaten in a competition whose history is set out in the Champions League titles list. It does not change Arsenal’s position much. Saka’s scan might. The other Champions League injury story from this window came on Tuesday in Paris, where Khvicha Kvaratskhelia’s ACL rupture against Barcelona gave the week a far worse version of the same headline.

Which games could he miss, and has this happened before?

The first test is Saturday, when Arsenal host Everton in the Premier League. Sports Mole’s assessment is that it would be a surprise to see him involved, and that is a judgement, not a club statement. After Everton comes Fleetwood Town away in the EFL Cup on October 27, a game Arsenal would rest him for in most circumstances, and then Liverpool at Anfield on November 1, the fixture that turns a short absence into a squad problem. Beyond the club dates sits an England one: Thomas Tuchel’s side play Croatia and Spain in the Nations League in November, and talkSPORT notes the England manager will want news too. The concern is rational because it has happened often enough. Sports Mole counts three separate absence spells for Saka last season: a hamstring problem early in the campaign, a hip problem that kept him out from the end of January to the middle of February, and Achilles trouble towards the end of the season. He still finished the year as one of the first names in Arteta’s side, and this season he has four goals and one assist in ten appearances. Arsenal’s history in Europe was built by sides that kept their best players fit for the spring, a point the club’s own past underlines in the Invincibles season account. The modern version of that problem is a medical room, and Wednesday night added its most important name to the wait.