Arsenal's Eternal Injury Crisis
I’ve been putting off writing on this subject for so many weeks now, because I’ve been waiting for our literally incredible ‘bad luck’ to run out. Amazingly, this still doesn’t appear to have occurred, but in the blind hope that the situation cannot possibly get any worse than it currently is, and that taking the plunge might arrest its unstoppable torrent, I’m forcing myself to write about this season’s injury ‘crisis’.
The problem, of course, is that there is actually very little to say that will have much significance regarding the current situation, because there is no easy answer, no one necessarily to blame, and little to draw on in terms of hoping for an improvement.
Suffice to say, injuries have been a debilitating factor over the past few seasons at Arsenal, and it is far from a recent phenomenon. The Telegraph calculated in December of last year that for the eleven seasons prior to 2014/15, Arsenal had suffered 312 ‘significant injuries’, defined as those leading to the player being ruled out for 10 days or more, and there have surely been several more to add to that tally since.
Though some have been truly terrible luck, such as Eduardo’s horrific leg break that derailed our title challenge in 2007/08, it has become more and more frustrating in recent years seeing players sitting on the sidelines with muscle injuries picked up in matches, or even in training.
With 10 players potentially out of the North London Derby on Sunday, our squad is beginning to shrink down to its bare bones, and there really does seem to be no way to alter the current trajectory either. Seemingly every game at the moment a player either hobbles off the field, or is pronounced out for a ‘short amount of time’ completely out of the blue, and then not heard of again for weeks.
Shad Forsythe was brought in last summer as ‘Head of Performance’ and reportedly charged with turning around the club’s medical fortunes. Initially, when Olivier Giroud returned just three months after breaking his tibia, a month earlier than expected, I was all ready to proclaim Forsythe our true saviour, and the Shad for Prime Minister hashtag was ready to go. Of course, the issues at Arsenal go beyond that which one man can deal with by himself, and no one has yet solved the mystery of Jack Wilshere.
That might be the most frustrating element of this whole debacle; we are seeing incredibly talented players lose their careers in the worst of ways, watching season after season pass them by. Players such as Abou Diaby, Tomas Rosicky, Jack, Eduardo, and maybe even extending to the likes of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, who has already suffered the ignominy of sitting out the best part of two FA Cup finals and a World Cup finals.
In fact, as loath as I am to mention it, it was the fact that we stuck with Robin van Persie for several injury-plagued seasons that made his departure to Manchester even more painful after he had spent a season and a half as one of the best players in Europe.
Our current crop of players are not fairing too much better in many respects. Aaron Ramsey, since recovering from a leg break of his own, has missed 21 and 17 games in the past two seasons respectively, and is currently spending some more time in the treatment room. Mathieu Debuchy’s Arsenal career will be defined by those two freak injuries that he sustained last year. Even Laurent Koscielny had to have his game time managed last season because of problems with his Achilles.
This is even true of players who were not considered particularly injury prone before joining the club. Mesut Özil apparently did not miss a single game through injury during his time at Real Madrid, and had, up until September 2nd 2013, only missed 17 in his entire career. During his current brief spell in North London, he has missed 30.
Now I would never suggest that I have a solution to this problem. I would never suggest that these issues can be attributed to just one factor in particular. But this doesn’t change the fact that this can no longer be put purely down to ‘bad luck’, and it’s setting us apart from our closest rivals.
This season that’s less obvious, with Manchester City, United and Liverpool all dealing with their own absentee lists, but it is hard to think of anything that characterised Chelsea’s title winning squad last year more than stability, with very few injuries disrupting the side, and indeed, Jose Mourinho even coming under pressure late on due to the lack of rotation in the squad.
A team cannot realistically win the Premier League (which should be Arsenal’s aim every season now) whilst constantly reshuffling the deck and hoping to draw an ace. Sure, occasionally a Francis Coquelin or Hector Bellerin does emerge from the pack, but such fortunate occurrences cannot be relied upon, particularly if they too then get injured.
The simple truth is that a team like Arsenal’s is going to pick up a number of injuries over a season, purely down to the number of competitions that we participate in, the inclusion of several international breaks in the first few months, and perhaps more widely the lack of a winter break in England that many have suggested would only serve to benefit the players. It is only unfortunate therefore that we do not yet seem to have found the perfect, or indeed any, solution to curtail these issues as far as possible.
All is not lost, it was reported yesterday evening that David Ospina, Mikel Arteta and Koscielny are all potentially available for selection on Sunday, with the Ox, Ramsey and Bellerin hopefully returning after the subsequent international break. We have known for a while that Danny Welbeck (remember him?), Jack and Tomas would be back towards the end of 2015 or early in 2016, and they all currently appear to be on course to meet that target.
The worry though is that, though amplified almost to the point of farce by the overlap currently, these complications are never truly going to dissipate, and that the idealistic vision that I had of putting the full squad back together is little more than the punchline to a particularly unfunny and overplayed joke.
On that note, I better leave it there, before I overwork myself and end up being given the dreaded prognosis of three weeks out on the sidelines.