Bukayo Saka is expected to miss Saturday’s Premier League game against Everton after suffering a quad injury in our 2-2 draw with Bayern Munich on October 21, 2026. Mikel Arteta confirmed the injury is to the quad in Saka’s left thigh, and said after the game that it “doesn’t look good at all”. The club has not given a timescale, and the length of his absence will depend on the results of his assessment.

Saka went down in the tenth minute at the Allianz Arena while playing a pass with no Bayern player near him. He clutched the front of his left thigh, received treatment and was replaced by Eberechi Eze, who went on to score our opener.

Arteta’s first reaction, speaking to TNT Sports, was that a player coming off with “a really sharp pain” is never good news. In his post-match press conference, he pointed to the sequence of Saka’s last three games, starting on the bench against Lille after an illness, starting against Forest at the weekend and then breaking down early in Munich, and to the intensity that Champions League games demand. His conclusion was blunt: “Those things happen unfortunately. It doesn’t look good at all but we have to wait and see.”

Saka was almost never unavailable between 2020-21 and 2023-24. Since then, he has dealt with hamstring, Achilles and hip problems, and this is the first significant quad injury of his career. He had looked sharp this season, and his finish against Lille was his fourth goal of the campaign.

Noni Madueke is the obvious answer, and he is in the best form of his Arsenal career. He moved across to the right after Saka went off in Munich and was involved in the move for Rice’s equaliser, three days after winning the game at Forest. That leaves Eze on the left, with Christos Tzolis still out with his hamstring injury.

Behind them, the only other wide option on the bench in Munich was 16-year-old Max Dowman. The Carabao Cup trip to Fleetwood on October 27 and the Champions League game at Slavia Prague on November 4 are the obvious places for him to get minutes.

For Everton, Madueke’s form makes this manageable. Over a longer absence, we have two senior wingers fit for a run of games every three or four days, and that is a squad problem the scan results will decide.