Germany provide Kai Havertz injury update ahead of Arsenal’s trip to Liverpool | Football

German national team director Rudi Voller has confirmed that Arsenal’s Kai Havertz is not going to be considered for selection ahead of the side’s upcoming World Cup qualifiers against Slovakia and Northern Ireland.

Havertz saw out the total 90 minutes after coming on as a second-half substitute for Viktor Gyokeres in Arsenal’s opening match of the Premier League season away to Manchester United.

But after the 1-0 win, it emerged that Havertz had suffered a knee injury at Old Trafford and the forward was subsequently ruled out of the Gunners’ clash with Leeds.

Reports in Havertz’s native Germany indicate that Havertz has ‘problems with the cartilage’ and ‘loose bodies in his knee’ – and the attacker has been undergoing tests to find out one of the best plan of action in recent days.

Havertz now faces an anxious wait to find whether or not he would require surgery again after going under the knife and missing three months of last season with a hamstring injury.

Facing the media ahead of Arsenal’s defeat of Leeds, Mikel Arteta revealed that the club were still at the hours of darkness regarding the severity of Havertz’s latest injury.

‘He’s got an injury, we don’t really know the extent of it. I feel we want a bit more time and more tests. I feel after that we’ll have more clarity about next steps,’ the Arsenal head coach told reporters.

‘I don’t need to speak in regards to the specifics. He’s not fit, we want to explore that issue a bit further after which determine what we’re going to do.

‘He cannot play tomorrow. I might like to have him fresh and available and bringing what he brings to the team. Unfortunately that’s not going to be possible.

‘Mentally he’s in a superb place because he’s a robust boy, very committed. He had an incredible recovery from the hamstring surgery, he never had an injury before so it was the primary experience.

‘Now he has a setback, we’ll see how bad it’s but he’ll cope with it in one of the best possible way. Hopefully we’re going to have him soon.’

Havertz will definitely miss Arsenal’s trip to champions Liverpool and Arteta can be expecting to be without Bukayo Saka, who went down with a hamstring problem within the victory over Leeds.

It stays to be seen if Martin Odegaard will probably be fit enough to feature on Merseyside after coming off with a shoulder injury on the Emirates.

Though the true extent of Havertz’s setback is yet to be revealed, the German national team have already accepted that they are going to not have the option to call upon the Arsenal star for his or her upcoming games.

‘He definitely won’t make it,’ Voller, the director of the national side, said on Tuesday.

‘We don’t know exactly how it would go in the approaching weeks, whether surgery is upcoming or it would be treated conservatively.’

Germany begin their World Cup qualifying campaign with a visit to Bratislava to tackle Slovakia on September 4.

Three days later, Julian Nagelsmann’s side will play host to Northern Ireland on the RheinEnergieSTADION in Cologne.

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