Arsene Wenger has confirmed that Arsenal will be without one of their star players for the start of the new campaign.

Santi Cazorla missed over five months of the 2015/16 campaign with a serious knee injury, but made his first pre-season appearance during the Gunners’ 3-1 win over Chivas on Sunday. However, the 31-year-old has yet to prove to Wenger that he is as fit as the rest of the squad, and will face yet another few weeks before he will be set to return back in the first team. Wenger confirmed that though the player is making good progress, he is behind the rest of the team in terms of fitness, and is now extremely unlikely to be fit to face Liverpool on August 14th for the opening day of the season.

“He is our technical security in midfield and we missed him for five or six months last season,” said Wenger.

“At the moment he is not completely there on the fitness front. That’s why I took him off at half-time.”

“He’s a bit behind the others physically but I think he will be alright, maybe not on August 15th, but at the end of August he should be alright.”

[Quotes via Evening Standard]

Arsenal face Viking next in their pre-season tour on August 5th, followed up by a clash against Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City in Sweden two days later.

However, Wenger is still without a fully fit squad, with a number of Gunners who played at Euro 2016 still yet to return from their summer breaks.

“Not all of [the international players will be back],” he told the club’s official website.

“But [Aaron] Ramsey will be involved, [Alexis] Sanchez will be involved.”

“The latest players coming back will not be involved – that’s [Mesut] Ozil, [Olivier] Giroud and [Laurent] Koscielny – they are the last ones and I don’t think they will be involved on the tour on Thursday, but all the others will.”