Arsenal have finally admitted that David Luiz was being monitored for a concussion following his clash of heads with Raul Jimenez 2 weeks ago.

Arsenal have issued an update about David Luiz whom they allowed to play on for a significant amount of time after his sickening clash of heads with Raul Jimenez that left the Wolves’ man with a fractured skull.

Even up until the game against Spurs, Arsenal were still insisting that Luiz had only suffered a bad cut to his head and that was the reason he was missing. They were keen to stress that it absolutely, positively wasn’t a concussion.

In fact, the last update I wrote, live as they reported it on Sky Sports, was just before the Spurs match: “6/12/20 Sky Sports confirmed David Luiz was not included vs Spurs because of the cut on his head and were keen to stress that Arsenal had stressed it was absolutely, definitely not because of a concussion, so it is probably a concussion.”

Previous updates stated:

• 2/12/20 Mikel Arteta – David Luiz should be fit for Sunday “if the scar is healing properly & he’s comfortable heading the ball.”
• 29/11/20 Mikel Arteta – “It was a really tense situation because the collision was surprising and straightaway you could see the reaction of the players, asking for the doctors to come on the field, which is never a good reaction. Then I just had news from David that the doc made all the tests and followed all the protocols to make sure that he was fine. He responded really well to all of them, but it was a nasty cut. David wanted to continue and he continued, but at half-time we decided to take him out because he was uncomfortable heading the ball.”

No mention, as you can see, of concussion, and TV broadcasters reported a number of times that the club said it wasn’t concussion.

However, Arsenal’s latest update on Luiz says, “Head. David sustained a deep laceration to the head during Wolves (h) on November 29. Due to the significant impact, David has continued to be closely monitored for a concussion and has followed all protocols. David is now back in training and his fitness will continue to be assessed ahead of Sunday’s match.”

It was clear at the time of the incident that concussion was going to be an issue. The head that sends another head to hospital cannot escape damage itself and I think Arsenal know they made a mistake leaving the defender on the pitch as they did.

Something else I’ve also noticed since Mikel Arteta arrived and Edu took control of Arsenal  is the quality and quantity of information coming out of the club has decreased quite a bit. Under Unai Emery, Arsenal were a lot freer with information than we had experienced when Arsene Wenger was in charge. Serge Gnabry, for instance, once vanished for over a year without the club saying a thing.

Now, it seems possibly worse than it was back then.

Take this latest update on Thomas Partey, for instance: “Thomas will be unavailable for forthcoming matches and is working hard with our medical team in order to return to training as soon as possible.”

It’s been seven days since the Spurs game. That’s plenty of time for Arsenal to have made some sort of estimate about how long he will be out for. Where is it? It’s certainly not on the ‘team news’ page that used to list all the injured players with details of their injuries. That vanished a month or so ago and hasn’t been seen since.

Similarly, there was no information given about the type of injury Sead Kolasinac picked up in training, nor was he nor Reiss Nelson mentioned in Arsenal’s latest update despite missing the game against Dundalk because of injury.

Nelson was ruled out because of a clash of heads in training so it would seem unlikely he will be involved against Burnley, but the club haven’t mentioned a thing.