'No kissing' - Steven Gerrard provides triple Aston Villa injury update ahead of Arsenal

Steven Gerrard joked how Douglas Luiz won't be able to kiss his girlfriend later after having his lips stitched following a nasty whack to the face from Pablo Fornals.

The Brazilian has a nasty gash on his mouth which, according to Gerrard, will need expert help, possibly by plastic surgeons.

Douglas, of course, is currently dating Villa women's star Alisha Lehmann and Gerrard says there will be no smooching later.

"There is going to be a bit of facial reconstruction in terms of Douglas Luiz," Gerrard outlined.

"He has a nasty gash in the mouth and will need surgery there. It's a mouth injury and we've done our best for the short term in terms of stitching him up.

"He's going to need expert help in order to make him look as good as he does but, listen, there will certainly be no kissing from Douglas, let me tell you!

"But it was very impressive that he carried on and it's a side of his game nobody gives him enough credit for.

"That's the type of character I want. When you come to tough places, you stand up and when the game demands bumps and bruises, you stay in for the fight right until the end and he would have, but when we got past that 60/65-minute mark and, maybe, we needed a little bit of freshness in the team."

Villa, meanwhile, had to deal with the early injury setback to Lucas Digne at West Ham following the Frenchman's withdrawal due to a hamstring issue.

"He says it is a small muscle injury," Gerrard added, with Ashley Young replacing Digne after just eight minutes.

"We will analyse it with an MRI scan. I am positive in what Lucas has said to me but he is obviously a major doubt for the Arsenal game.

"Elsewhere, Calum is in a similar situation to Dougie off a forearm smash. There are a lot of ice packs about