Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta (Picture: Shutterstock)
Arsenal were dealt an unfortunate injury blow after coming from behind to beat Leeds United 2-1 at the Emirates.
Mikel Arteta’s side were not at their best in the first half and were made to pay shortly after the break when James Justin fired Leeds into a deserved lead.
Daniel Farke’s side were unbeaten in the league before this fixture and had chances to double their lead before Riccardo Calafiori levelled for the Gunners.
And from there, the defending champions clicked into gear, with substitute Bruno Guimaraes combining superbly with Declan Rice to fire home the winner.
However, it was not all good news following full-time for the hosts, with the BBC reporting that substitute Piero Hincapie appeared to suffer an injury during the team’s warm-down.
Hincapie is yet to start a league game this season but came on for goalscorer Calafiori in the 82nd minute as Arteta’s side ground out a victory in front of their home fans.
It is standard practice for substitutes to return to the pitch for a warm-down after full-time, but Hincapie was said to be carried off the pitch after clutching his right ankle.
Piero Hincapie came on as a substitute in the closing stages (Picture: Shutterstock)
Given the timing of the injury, Arteta was not asked about Hincapie’s condition in his post-match press conference, but was keen to praise his side for their gutsy second-half performance to turn their game around.
‘We knew it was going to be really tough,’ he said.
‘We are coming from three weeks without 16 players after a heavy defeat and we had all these things in the tummy and today we had two objectives: face the challenge because the team that hasn’t lost in the Premier League, and they’re in a great position because they fully deserved it.
‘I said yesterday in the press conference and secondly because we had a point to prove something was touched in our identity against Brighton, especially in the manner that we reacted after being in a difficult situation context
‘And today even though we started extremely well and being really dominant we didn’t capitalise on the spaces, the situation, the overloads that we had to attack the ball and the box much better so that left the game a little bit open
‘We knew that they don’t need much to threaten you every time they are putting the ball in the box, they are incredibly dangerous and we got into a situation with 12:30 at home after a defeat, it is a bad mixture.
‘We got out of that through touching again and pinching our desire to win, to have a reaction to show the personality and courage that we have in this team and once the equaliser went in, the energy changed, the finishers came in to make a huge difference again to help us to win the game
‘That’s what we are made of and we know that it’s going to be every single week, the same because every game that I have watched in those two weeks which has been a lot to understand what is happening in the league again is not going to be any different to that.’
