Only Cristhian Mosquera and William Saliba are missing from Arsenal's pre-Napoli training

Tonight, Arsenal return to the Champions League for the first time since narrowly losing the final in Budapest. The Premier League champions travel to Naples to face Napoli in GW1.

At the start of this season, Arsenal have struggled with injuries in their defence. Thankfully, due to some depth building in the summer and previous windows, the injuries haven't fazed the Gunners at all.

William Saliba is Arsenal's biggest injury miss, but even with him out for months, Mikel Arteta has all the means at his disposal to build around the injury. There is even some good news involving Jurrien Timber.

Arteta was unable to provide any updates on the team in his press conference because, well, there wasn't a press conference. The flight into Italy was delayed by over three hours, which means that, hooray, the Gunners are entitled to /checks notes/ delay-repay compensation! There's a silver lining to everything, folks.

Despite not hearing concrete updates from the manager, Arsenal fans heard all they need to know about the state of the team in training. It was genuinely a clean bill of health, with only Cristhian Mosquera and William Saliba missing from pre-Napoli training.

Mosquera the only first-team player not training today (aside from Saliba obviously).

Timber there, Bruno as well.

This means that it's great news for Timber, who has been looking closer to a return over the last few weeks. Arteta has teased his return recently, claiming that he's progressing well, but now that he's back to training with the team, we have solid evidence of that.

Timber is an option to face Napoli, but whether or not he plays remains to be seen. Despite it being a Champions League return, it's not a game where Arteta needs to take any serious risks. If anything, Timber will probably play a short cameo from the bench.

Ben White has been excellent in Timber's absence. We have truly seen that relationship between him and Bukayo Saka flourish again on the pitch, with the two England internationals bringing the best out of each other.

Despite how good White has been, everybody knows the natural pecking order when each player is fit. White cannot help playing second-fiddle to one of the best full-backs in the world right now.

Knowing Arteta, there won't be many changes from the team that got the win against Chelsea at the weekend. The players we could see drafted in include Bruno Guimarães or Eberechi Eze; the players who probably could have started that match, anyway.

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