Team news | Arsenal vs Spurs | Ange on Perisic injury

Ange Postecoglou has outlined the disappointment felt by him and the team in losing Ivan Perisic to injury.

Earlier this week, we confirmed that Ivan had suffered a complex anterior cruciate ligament injury that is expected to see him sidelined for the rest of the campaign.

Having enjoyed such a strong start to the season with a number of crucial impacts for us from bench, especially his cameo appearance in Saturday's win over Sheffield United, Ange admitted in his pre-match chat with SPURSPLAY that he was sad to lose the Croatia international, especially in terms of his invaluable experience.

However, our Head Coach expects that, given his years in the game, the 34-year-old has the mentality and strength to come back even stronger from the injury.

"Obviously, it's disappointing and it's a massive blow to him," Ange reflected on the Croatian's injury. "He has been one of the guys since I have come in that you realise why they have had such a fantastic career and why they have had the longevity in terms of his ability to perform at the highest level and for the biggest clubs. It's just an unfortunate thing; one of those things, a freak thing in training.

"It's disappointing for him, disappointing for us because he has had a really strong start to the season. He gives us that experience which we don't have a lot of that and you see that in the big games, the big moments - he's been involved in pretty much all of them. So it's disappointing for us as well.

"He's a strong-willed individual. You don't have a career like Ivan's had without being able to deal with this. I'm sure in the course of time he will build himself up and be ready to play football again. I have no doubt he is going to play well into his late 30s because of the way he looks after himself."

In terms of the rest of the squad, Ange confirmed it is a case of as you were following our victory over Sheffield United with Ivan joining Rodrigo Bentancur, Giovani Lo Celso, Ryan Sessegnon and Bryan Gil in the treatment room.

"Health wise, everyone else from last week is fine and ready to  go," he said. "We still have two or three who are a bit longer term but everyone else is okay.

"It's been a good week, training wise. Last week, we only really had one session altogether after the internationals got in so we had a full week of training, a strong week of training."