I suppose that one way of looking at the illness and injury problems currently affecting Arsenal as the pre-season schedule has moved from Australia to China, is that it would be much worse if Arsene Wenger was having to cope with it while the Premier League season was in full swing.
As it is, a suspected bout of food poisoning is only affecting his preparations for the new season, but that in itself is far from ideal as the Gunners approach what was supposed to be a really strong assault on the EPL title. You could see from the team that the boss started with against the might of Bayern Munich that we have problems, especially after he had to make a change just before kick-off.
That sickness bug that his Per Mertesacker left us with Mohamed Elneny at the centre of a back three with Monreal on the left and young Bielik on the right. So not just a lack of experience but not one of them is an out and out centre back.
To be fair to them they grew into it and did okay and that might just be a silver lining to this cloud, but I am sure that Wenger wants as much time as possible with the players who will be in the side when the season starts. Giroud is another Gunner out of action at the minute and the summer signing Sead Kolasinac had to go off before the break with the same thing.
The Mirror also reports that Koscielny is struggling with a back injury and that other players are not 100 percent, but Wenger tried to see the positive side of this in that the fringe players have the chance to shine.
He said, “We had to dig deep and think we will benefit from it. The doctor thinks it is food poisoning.
“Kolasinac was sick as well. Walcott, Aaron, all had a little bit of food poisoning as well.
“Steve Bould has a hernia on his neck and had to do it in Australia and he couldn’t travel. He went home on Saturday. He’s OK. He went home and he’s good.
“If you ask me is it an ideal way to prepare physically, I say certainly not. Does it have other advantages? Yes, because we can meet fans from all over the world.
“The bonding is easier because we live together for two weeks. On that front it can be positive.
“It was a shock to come from Australia where we were freezing when came out of the plane in Shanghai and we decided to work very hard on Monday and Tuesday and so I was a bit scared that we could have big problems.
“But the real answer will be given by the way we start in the championship.”
Do you think Arsenal will be ready?
It may unite the team and be an exciting trip but in my experience a tour this far out can never be good this close to the start of the season.
If you consider temperature and humidity, massive change in diet and the way food is prepared,(regardless of how good the hotel is they stay in) and jet lag which kills across this sort of timezone,(at least it’s not Oz) I’m not surprised it’s hit them hard. We all saw the photos of them training in ridiculously hot conditions in the stadium.
I worked all across Asia including China extensively for 2 years,(from the UK) only when I’d eventually had enough and changed jobs did I realise I’d lost over a stone in weight due to all of the above.
On the jet lag we’ve got to factor 1 day for every hour time difference to normalise. So 8 days for China.
It’s a tricky one as other continents support big teams now so we must give back to the fans and also there is the team building experience but become unlucky and it could really impact the start of our season. Let’s just make sure we give lots of personal contact to the Chelsea players when we meet them 🙂
This will definitely harm our chances .People should remember what happened last season .We had a terrible start to our campaign and that affected out Champions league spot.Only this can help is if Wenger makes some good addition before our match against Leicester.But I don’t think that is going to happen.
So hoping to see a makeshift CB for first two matches
??? Per and Mert had food poisoning so will be fine in a couple of weeks
Is Gabriel on extended leave ? Certainly Holding and Mustafi are so thats 5 CB’s who are there currently for the start of season !!
I would much prefer Bielik and Elneny to be tried out now at CB in a meaningless friendly than in PL
and guess what all you naysayers ?We won all 3 games with those makeshift CBs… so whats the drama ???
Its out of anyones control. The far east is a source of revenue 4 the arsenal
Just read on line that the arsenal medics have confirmed it’s not food poisoning. I had hoped it was as other possibilities are Asian strains of Flu etc.