Waching daily Nov 28 2018

Arsenal defenders Nacho Monreal and Kostas Mavropanos both seem to have suffered set backs in their recovery from injury

The Gunners seem not to have broken the injury curse that plagued them for most of Arsene Wenger's reign despite massive changes in both medical and coaching staff

The club's medical staff has been heavily criticized over the years due to perennial injury crisis plaguing the club at key stages of the season and leading to loss of vital points

The club currently have a number of players out while some recovering. Worryingly two of the players seem to have suffered setbacks in their recovery

Nacho Monreal was listed as a doubt for two games before Bournemouth but has now been ruled out for the next two weeks with a hamstring injury

Mavropanos who has not seen a single minute of football this season since injuring his groin during pre-season was supposed to return to training this month but will now be returning in December

Stephan Lichtsteiner was listed as a doubt for the game against Bournemouth on Sunday and failed to make the matchday squad, similar to the way Monreal was listed in previous games

It meant that Arsenal had played the game without a single natural defender on the bench

On the bright side Laurent Koscielny is progressing with his return from a long-term injury, he has returned to training and joined the U23s for game time as he worked towards full fitness

"He started to train with us, every day, one month ago," Unai Emery said. "The process with him in this international break is to finish training with us every day to start playing, little by little

"First, our idea is to start with the under-23s, but also, these two weeks training with us, I am looking at him

He is well, with good performances, good feeling and I think he, today, is close to also playing with us

"But the first idea is, and maybe on Monday, he can play with the under-23s. We are going to decide tomorrow the plan with him, but we are thinking for him to start to take minutes

He played 45 mins on Monday night as the U23s fell to a 5-0 defeat to Derby County

But before you start panicking, the young gunners only conceded one goal while Koscielny was on the pitch