Dejan Kulusevski has been ruled out of Thursday’s Europa League round of 16 first leg with AZ Alkmaar - and is unlikely to feature again before March's international break.
The forward, who has enjoyed a stunning season to date, has picked up a foot injury and will now likely miss both of our knockout stage round of 16 clashes with AZ as well as our next two Premier League fixtures (AFC Bournemouth at home (9 March) and Fulham away (16 March)).
Incredibly, it will be the first game in well over a year that the Sweden international has missed for us. Not since our 2-2 Premier League draw away at Manchester United in January, 2024, has he missed one of our matches – a run of 60 games.
On the injury to Dejan, Ange said: "Deki is the only one (who hasn't travelled). He's had a knock on his foot. He's not really sure when (it happened) to be honest.
"It's been sore last couple of weeks, but he has been able to train and play and still get through it, but it wasn't getting better, so we did some further investigations but there's no real clarity. We're just waiting on a couple of things to find out the extent of it.
"But he's unlikely to be back before the international break. It's nothing serious, it's nothing surgical or anything but he hasn't travelled."
There is positive news for the squad though as Cristian Romero, Micky van de Ven and Dominic Solanke have all travelled to the Netherlands with their team-mates and are all in contention to return to action after their respective injury lay-offs.
Djed Spence, Kevin Danso and Mathys Tel are all in line to make their European debuts for the Club as they are all included in our squad for the knockout stages.
Fraser Forster, Antonin Kinsky, Sergio Reguilon and Timo Werner are all ineligible for the Europa League.
Ben Davies, Radu Dragusin and Richarlison remain sidelined.
Watch - Trio return to training ahead of Alkmaar test