Mikel Arteta provides injury update on five Arsenal stars ahead of Sunderland clash

Mikel Arteta has provided an update on five injured Arsenal stars ahead of their Premier League clash with Sunderland this weekend - with Viktor Gyokeres out injured for the Premier League leaders.

The Gunners travel to the Stadium of Light where Arteta will reunite with former captain Granit Xhaka in Saturday's evening kick-off. The north Londoners will have several first-team stars missing the match including striker Viktor Gyokeres. Gabriel Jesus, Kai Havertz, Noni Madueke and captain Martin Odegaard are also out injured.

And, ahead of the match, Arteta confirmed the five players are not available for the match this weekend. Asked for an update in his pre-match presser on Friday morning, the Spaniard said: "No news, we remain the same and nobody new that can join the squad so all the same."

• Ex-Arsenal star quit football and made £10billion before hatching plan to buy out the Kroenkes
• Every word Mikel Arteta said on Arsenal vs Sunderland, Granit Xhaka and five injured stars

Jesus - who has been out since January with an ACL injury - recently returned to first-team training but Arteta is reluctant to rush his return. He added: "Now it's about making the steps day by day in a different surrounding. Obviously, he's been doing everything on his own; now he's got players around him, very competitive players around him, and see how he copes with that. But he's full of energy, I love the reaction of all his team-mates when he first joined us and yeah, great to have him back."

On Havertz, Madueke and Odegaard, Arteta hinted that the trio could be back for the north London derby with Tottenham on November 23 after the international break.

He added: "Some of them, all of them I don't know. There are a lot of things that have to happen in the next two weeks, and everything has to be perfect, but I think we'll be very close with most of them to be in a really strong position."

The Premier League leaders will also be looking to continue their remarkable form which has seem them keep eight clean sheets in a row.

On Tuesday, the Gunners took their winning streak in all competitions into double figures with a 3-0 victory over Slavia Prague, equalled a club record for consecutive clean sheets and broke a Champions League record when Max Dowman came off the bench aged 15 years and 308 days to become the competition’s youngest-ever debutant.

Arsenal also equalled the 1969-70 Leeds team, who until Tuesday night had been the only English side in European Cup or Champions League history to win their first four games without conceding a goal.

The team’s eighth clean sheet in a row equalled a club record dating back to 1903, and on Tuesday Arteta said: “That’s a long time ago, so it tells you about the difficulty of achieving it. There’s a lot of work there to achieve that.

“The most pleasing thing is probably not the record, it’s the mindset of the players. They are talking about how we can still do better. There were one or two situations that we could have resolved better (against Slavia).

“If we do that, we can keep improving and that record will have a bigger meaning.”