Mikel Arteta has defended Arsenal's training programme after confirming Piero Hincapié and Martín Zubimendi suffered "far from ideal" injuries in a post-match session on Saturday.
Hincapié was pictured being carried from the pitch by staff during training held at Emirates Stadium after the Gunners beat Leeds United 2-1 last weekend.
Both Hincapié and Zubimendi have suffered ankle injuries and the pair are undergoing scans on Monday to determine the extent of the damage.
Speaking ahead of Tuesday's Champions League home clash with Lille, Arteta said: "We had a training session planned after the game for the players that didn't have enough minutes, to get everybody [into] the recovery on Sunday and to get everybody in the rhythm and in two very unfortunate actions, we lost two players.
"Not great. We need to assess them today, they will have further scans to see how they are and then we will have the timeframe how long they are going to be out for.
"They are both going to miss tomorrow's match, that's for sure. Today they are going to have a further scan and probably tomorrow we will know more and let's see how they are going to go. Piero's one looks a little bit more serious I think but we are going to have to wait and see. [It is] far from ideal."
Such sessions are commonplace and Arteta revealed he had spoken with staff to discuss whether anything could have been done differently to avoid the issues.
"The temptation is now [to say] 'Oh we don't want to take that risk and now we do something else.'
"But we were going to do that the next day anyway and when you play those kind of small-sided games, there is contact and these things can happen. They didn't happen once last season and we did it 37 times I think.
"The fact it is there, people are watching, it raises other doubts. Now it is very difficult to do.
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"My question was: If we had to this again the way we planned the seven days that we had in that period with the players that didn't have enough load, would it be the case? The answer is yes. "It is a sport of contact and this can happen. What we can do is guys, they are sop competitive, [say], when we do that, "please don't touch each other too much.' That's it.
"[The solution is] very easy: you don't train. Never train and they don't get injured but the consequence to that is when they have to play, they have no rhythm. When you ask them to play, they are going to have no impact in the game.
"Hopefully it happened now and it doesn't happen again. What can you do? If I knew, I had a crystal ball clear [I'd say] 'Go in the jacuzzi everybody and I'll see you tomorrow.'"
Arteta also confirmed William Saliba has returned to light training but refused to put an exact timeframe on his return to action, confirming the centre-back is still "weeks" away from a comeback.