Partey was an unused substitute in the 2nd leg of AFCON qualifier against Angola, despite playing all 90 minutes in the first leg
By Kehinde Okeowo
Ghana coach, Chris Hughton confirmed the worst fear of a lot of Arsenal fans after revealing Thomas Partey is carrying an injury.
The Black Stars drew 1-1 against Angola in the second leg of the double header of the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) qualifying match on Monday.
Hughton’s men were able to fight back from going a goal down to Lucas Joao’s penalty to claim the late draw.
However, their star midfielder, Partey was left as an unused substitute, despite playing all 90 minutes of Ghana’s win against the same opponents in the first leg last Thursday.
ALSO READ: Nigeria regain top spot after 1-0 win over Guinea-Bissau
After the encounter, Hughton to journalists that Partey was left on the bench because he suffered a knock during the first leg.
He said: “Thomas has some small issues, a small injury issue and we felt it was too big of a risk to start him,” the Ghana boss said when asked why Partey had been left on the bench.
“The strategy defensively was that Angola has some very good technical players, especially in the attacking areas. So we knew that defensively we would have to be good and we would have to be solid.
“But because they’re such a good, expansive, technical team, we wanted to use the spaces, utilise the spaces and attack fast. I thought once Angola scored the penalty, it gave us a lift, it gave us inspiration to get back into the game.”
Partey has been a key player for Mikel Arteta’s Gunners this season, but he has missed 37 games due to injury since arriving at the Emirates in October 2020.
Those frequent injury issues led to Arsenal sending their own lead performance physio with the midfielder for this latest international break but despite those precautions, he appears to have picked up an issue.
