Arsenal have been plagued by injuries this season with key players like Ben White, Martin Odegaard and Bukayo Saka missing a number of games.
Takehiro Tomiyasu, Saka, Gabriel Jesus, Gabriel Martinelli and Kai Havertz are all currently on the sidelines and in truth the injuries have heavily impacted the Gunners’ results. Mikel Arteta’s side find themselves 13 points behind Premier League leaders Liverpool, who have remained fairly fortunate on the injury front themselves.
After Havertz was ruled out for the season after sustaining a hamstring injury during the warm-weather training camp in Dubai, Arteta opened up about the sheer number of injuries impacting his squad. “We were having a great Dubai camp and then the injury happened in an unexpected way and it’s a big blow because of the injuries we have,” Arteta said last month.
“We’ve had players who are injured who’ve played 130 games in the last two seasons, so it’s an accident waiting to happen when you continue to load, load and load. The intensity is at a different level and the demands in terms of minutes in this competitive environment is getting higher and higher and it’s a consequence of that. The amount of muscle and tendon injuries is higher than ever so there’s a relationship.
“We’re very limited and we’re training less than ever. There’s no time for training. The biggest problem is that you don’t train the muscle, the muscle is undertrained and then you expose the muscle and the tendon to an exposure that it can’t absorb because the tendon has 72 hours to recover.”
The likes of White and Riccardo Calafiori have recently come back from injury but Arsenal still remain relatively light in the forward areas. This may change over the coming weeks, though, with Martinelli and Saka hopefully available for selection.
