Merino 'fit' and 'ready' after freak injury
· Yahoo Sports
Mikel Merino hopes to be back in action when Arsenal take on Crystal Palace on Sunday after overcoming a confusing foot injury.
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The Spanish midfielder has not featured since January and needed both surgery and extensive rehab on the issue.
"It's a stress fracture in a very strange part of the foot where not even the specialists had seen before," he explained.
"It was a weird one. At the beginning I was a little scared, I'm not going to lie. I didn't know examples, we didn't have them from other people that had done the same injury. We didn't know what to expect.
"The first couple of weeks were tough. I tried to crack on with it, have the right mentality, be positive and with the right motivation to try to go forward. Everything has gone perfectly since."
Merino, 29, says the foot is no longer on his mind and he has resumed training with his team-mates. He insists he is "fit" and "ready to go".
During his recovery he revealed he needed use of a mobility scooter and that parts of the recovery process were "very hard" mentally.
he explained: "With the mobility scooter it's just trying to bring fun out of it, see the sun. I couldn't walk for two months. It's a hard time on crutches. The mobility scooter was a fun way to see the light of day and enjoy time with the dog.
"My feeling was I was playing through pain for a little bit but I wasn't expecting that a big fracture was going to happen there. When I got the news and they said I was going to be out around five months, I could only think about missing the World Cup, missing the end of the season with my team and not being able to help them. I was devastated at the time. It took me a couple of days to recover from it.
"I had two options, to go down and cry myself to extinction or keep my head up, be positive and try to use my time to improve other aspects. Working as hard as I can is the way I approach life."