London, Oct 28 (IANS): Hit hard by injuries to several key footballers, Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger is concerned ahead of the second leg of their Champions League group stage away encounter against German heavyweights Bayern Munich on November 4.
Forwards Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain (hamstring) and Theo Walcott (calf) on Tuesday joined Aaron Ramsey, Jack Wilshere, Danny Welbeck, Mikel Arteta, Tomas Rosicky and David Ospina on the sidelines.
Arsenal will wait 48 hours for the results of scans on Walcott and Oxlade-Chamberlain after the England internationals suffered injuries during their 0-3 loss to Sheffield Wednesday during a League Cup contest at the Hillsborough Stadium.
"I'm concerned because our next game is a big game on Saturday (against Swansea City) in the English Premier League (EPL), we have the Champions League match against Bayern Munich coming up," Wenger told the club's website on Tuesday.
"Already we are now short (on players). To lose two players tonight, two offensive players, is damaging for us."
Wenger, however, admitted using "too many experienced players" in the League Cup game.
"I have to manage the workload of the players and at the end of the day I still think I brought too many experienced players here. We lost two players," he explained.
Wenger made nine changes during the match but still included Olivier Giroud, Per Mertesacker, Mathieu Flamini, Petr Cech, Mathieu Debuchy, Kieran Gibbs and Calum Chambers.
But Wenger said the level was "too high" for the younger players he selected. Midfielder Glen Kamara and forward Alex Iwobi -- both 19 -- made full debuts in the last-16 tie, while 17-year-olds Ismael Bennacer and Kristian Bielik came off the bench.
"Ideally I would have loved to have won tonight. I will not use that as an excuse but I'm sure as a squad now we can focus on other competitions and I must say, like I said before the game, because of many foreign players playing in the EPL you have more and more good players playing going down to the Championship and to play with young players against Championship players becomes difficult," he said.
"The level of the Championship has gone up and you see that once you have not enough of experience to deal with these types of games, you have no chance to win it," the 66-year-old added.
"Once I lost two players, I had Gabriel and (Nacho) Monreal and I did not bring them on as we could not afford to lose any more players."