Morning all.
It’s a change of focus for midweek as we look ahead to Atletico Madrid in the Champions League. Right now we’re on tenterhooks when it comes to the fitness of Kai Havertz and Eberechi Eze. The former, in particular, looked quite downcast when he came off on Saturday, and despite some stuff about him moving ‘freely’ afterwards, I’m quite worried about him.
It’s a little over a year ago that Mikel Arteta spoke about his physicality, saying:
Genetically, he is a powerhouse. He is so well-built. He is a player that anything you ask him, he is happy to do: to run in zone six, to be very robust, to make long distances. His body absorbs everything. And then he really looks after himself.
Then his hamstring went a few days later, and after recovering from that and returning in pre-season, he picked up that knee problem on the opening day. Did the manager curse him? Yes, there can be no question about it. He’s a witch. But, in seriousness, there’s also got to be a reason why injuries, generally speaking, are so prevalent in the last few seasons.
I had a look at the absences this season, and based on the info from Transfermarkt, the only players who haven’t missed a Premier League game through injury this season are Martin Zubimendi (who has played in all 34 fixtures), Eberechi Eze (29 appearances, but there was that spell when he was on the bench for a run of games), and Myles Lewis-Skelly (although just 2 starts and 14 sub appearances for a grand total of 411 minutes might go some way to explain that).
Everyone else has missed at least one game.
Premier League games missed through injury by Arsenal players this season:
Jurrien Timber – 4*
Ben White – 7
William Saliba – 6
Gabriel – 6
Cristhian Mosquera – 7
Riccardo Calafiori – 9*
Piero Hincapie – 5
Declan Rice – 1
Christian Norgaard – 5
Martin Odegaard – 12
Mikel Merino – 11*
Leandro Trossard – 3
Gabriel Martinelli – 2
Gabriel Jesus – 13
Viktor Gyokeres – 2
Kai Havertz – 23
Bukayo Saka – 6
Noni Madueke – 6
Max Dowman – 13
* = ongoing absence.
This is PL only, and with cup and European commitments, some of these players have missed many more games than that. Cumulatively, that’s 141 games, more than three seasons between them (38 x 3 = 114). I know that’s not how it works, but it puts it into easy context when you round it up like that.
I do think it’s worth nothing that in this day and age, with the demands of the game itself and how it’s played now, as well as the schedule which leaves the players at the biggest clubs with little or no time off to rest and recuperate, injuries are going to happen. They don’t just happen at Arsenal, but obviously it feels more acute to us because we’re so focused on our own club.
However, when almost every single player in your very big squad has been missing for a Premier League game, surely there’s a need to try and understand why that is. Do we just have a lot of injury prone players? It’s possible, some are obviously more prone to absences than others. Have we been unlucky in some cases? Sure, think Mikel Merino, for example, but I don’t think any club can offset that kind of impact injury. Another day, that challenge leaves his foot sore, not broken. Similarly, a couple of awkward landings caused Martin Odegaard two absences this season, and a clash of knees is another one that you can often run off than be sidelined by.
We often think about injured players and what they might bring to the team in a performance where we struggle, for example, and that’s not unreasonable at all. But in the wider picture, we miss more than the individual – we miss the relationships and combinations on the pitch. It is crazy to think that it’s 2024 since Odegaard, Havertz and Saka started together. Would this season have been a little less of a grind if they’d all been fit? I think so, I can’t absolutely prove it, but I don’t need to be convinced.
So much of what we do as a team is built around our full-backs. I have bemoaned the fact that Jurrien Timber was, too often for my liking, given a lot to do in the opposition final third, but we’ve missed him, as well as Riccardo Calafiori on the other side. Defensively I have zero complaints about Piero Hincapie, whose performance against Newcastle I highlighted yesterday, but in the opposition half he doesn’t quite have the same thrust as the Italian.
Ben White now looks a shadow of the player who was, at his best, a key part of how well our right-hand side operated and attacked with such efficiency. Why? Injuries to him as a result of the burden placed on him by injury to others (Timber’s unfortunate opening day ACL when he was allowed play on, let’s not forget). And on the right, you can’t look at Bukayo Saka and say he’s been the same player since that surgery last season. It’s not to say he can’t reach that level again, but right now he’s not there, and a total of 15 missed games this season tells you there’s something to sort out.
I went over to Arseblog News, because I remember a couple of summers ago there was a lot of focus on injuries and I vaguely recall talk of some kind of internal inquest. I found this quote from Mikel Arteta:
The only thing we lack is to have continuity in the first eleven to make us strong and efficient as a group. And that, with the injuries this year, is impossible.
He was speaking to Spanish newspaper El Pais. In 2014. The more things change etc etc. Anyway, let’s hope for good news on Havertz, similarly Eze who said he felt ok after Saturday but he said that the last time he came off and missed games – including a cup final where his presence would have been very, very useful.
Beyond that, there’s little Arsenal can do now to change the overall picture, but whatever happens between now and the end of the season, some serious examination is required to ensure that we avoid some of these absences in the years to come.
Right, I’ll leave it there, but you can join myself and James an Arsecast Extra a bit later. We’ve already put out the call for questions on BlueSky @gunnerblog.bsky.social and @arseblog.com. So fire away using the hashtag #arsecastextra – or if you’re an Arseblog Member on Patreon, leave your question in the #arsecast-extra-questions channel on our Discord server. The pod should be out around midday.
For now, have a good one.
