Mikel Arteta makes bizarre ‘sharing wives’ gag about two of his Arsenal players

Mikel Arteta drew laughs from the reporters present at his press conference on Friday as he joked Ben White and Oleksandr Zinchenko have been living together since their on-field feud at Nottingham Forest this week.

Arsenal were 2-1 winners at the City Ground but much of the post-match discussion centred around a disagreement between Oleksandr Zinchenko and Ben White at full-time.

The pair had to be pulled apart and Arteta was then seen trying to calm Zinchenko down.

‘They’ve been sharing wives!’

Ahead of Sunday’s top-of-the-table clash between Arsenal and Liverpool at the Emirates, Arteta was asked about the situation between the pair, and gave a tongue-in-cheek answer.

“They’ve been in the same house the past few days sharing wives and everything,” Arteta said. “It’s fine they’re living together now. They’re best mates.

“You don’t argue with someone if you don’t have a great relationship. That happens because you have the trust and chemistry with somebody to react the way they did.”

Meanwhile, Arteta confirmed Thomas Partey will not return to the Arsenal squad in time for the game against Liverpool after suffering a setback in his recovery from injury.

“He’s not going to be available in the squad, we don’t know if it’s a few days or weeks,” Arteta said. “He felt something in a very similar area and he wasn’t able to train the last few days.

“It is a big concern because he’s such an important player for us and then we lost him for a while. Now it’s been a long time without him.

“They’ve been different kinds of injuries. Not everything is bad luck but there are a lot of things that are difficult to control. The player has an history where he’s issues in the past so we have to protect him.”