Cazorla’s season over! Would Arsenal have challenged with him?

If Arsenal had not slipped up so many times to allow the current Premier League leaders to open up such a big, and frankly unbridgeable, gap at the top of the table then we Arsenal fans would have been hoping for the boost that our team would get when the injury hit Spanish midfield star Santi Cazorla was fit to play again.

We would have been disappointed, though, and even though there is no chance of us beating Chelsea to the title, we still have the hopes of winning the FA cup trophy and the fight for the top four to worry about. So the news reported by the Daily Mail that Cazorla has suffered yet another setback on his road to recovery and will not feature for Arsenal again this season is a pretty big blow.

The question is, how much of a blow is this news and how much has his long spell on the sidelines hurt the Gunners and our chances of making this season a successful one? It is impossible to say for sure, but a lot of Arsenal fans have been suggesting on social media that Cazorla is a hugely important player for us and that our challenge for the EPL title would have been much stronger had he not picked up that ankle injury in October.

On the other hand a Metro report has rubbished this theory and claimed that the problems of Arsenal are much bigger than missing just one player and that the Spaniard is not the sort to help the Gunners to win games, so which is closer to the truth?

My opinion is that we really miss Cazorla in the middle. He already had a couple of assists in his eight league games this season but he was often the man to get a creative and attacking move started. He made the job of Mesut Ozil easier and the two combined to great effect. I would also point to that away game at Man City when Cazorla ran the show and Arsenal finally showed that we could compete in away games against the big boys.

The Metro report does point out that Arsenal’s win percentage since the start of last season shows a big increase from 50 percent to 62.5 percent with Cazorla in the side and a comparison of the games with and without him this season tells a sad story.

The Gunners took 17 points from the eight games he played and then 33 points in the 17 games since and that recuced our points per game from 2.38 to 1.94. Even more frustrating is when you multiply the 25 games we have played in the Premier League by that first figure because it would put us just half a point behind Chelsea. And the eight games he played did include the slow start when we had no defenders and were missing a lot of players after the summer tournaments.

Cazorla is not the only Arsenal star to have missed games for one reason or another, of course, and there are lots of factors involved in whether or not Arsenal would have been closer to, level with, or even above the current leaders had our little magician stayed fit, but I think we have to accept that his loss was a blow. How big do you think it was?

Bob.

10 Comments

  1. Hi fellow gunners! well the problem in Arsenal is not easy to analyse, talk of coach who refused to buy Good players, just compare this,’ couqlin,elneny, ramsey,iwobi,walcot,adelaide. to Rabiot, verati,lucas, Draxler,Dmaria, .our players are average, they are not good enough, was Cazorla, not injured last season and before,? he will come back stronger by next season, and Arsene will be fooled, then by November he’s off again,i don’t think Arsene will leave, but if he’s gonna stay, he has to be ruthless,those guys are letting him down, and he needs to sell some fringe payers and bring in good once.

  2. You know I have question marks in that position cazorla plays especially in away matches against big or physical opposition.
    When we are not dominating the game we need big and robust players for his position.
    You could see how we were totally dominated by psg in our first leg.
    So for me even if he was still able to play wenger’s management is what would have mattered the most

  3. This is simply a validation of what we all feared! As we say stats don’t lie but to pin our shortcomings on Cazorla is wrong.
    True we don’t have a CM of the talent of Cazorla but we have players that have talent aplenty but aren’t delivering consistently on them. And a transfer policy that is far from great.

  4. Seriously sometimes I laugh when I see our sub,how on earth do we expect us to beat the likes of bayern madid, juve,just look at our midfield, no fighter, imagine couqlin,xaka,elneny playing with the likes of Alonso,Alex vidal, lewadonski,we don’t have a fighter, no playmaker,no natural winger,I wished Arsene bought Kante, and Draxler then brought back Fabregas, just imagine how our mildfiled we look like, but instead if you remove ramsey, you’re bringing on Adelaide,and you want to win the league, seriously wenger must go enough of this,pain.

    1. its pointless to compare worldclass players to average at best players.
      The bayern stumped on us and showed us that we are light years away from their league.
      Wenger should go and take his crap with him

  5. The gap in the PL table that is currently existing between Chelsea and Arsenal is still closable and Arsenal will undoubtedly close that gap and surpassed whatever be the final points tally any club in the PL was able to finished on and will lift PL title at the end of this season to the admiration of us the Gooners. And I strongly believe, Arsenal will beat Liverpool in their next PL game at Anfield before sending out Lincoln from this season’s FA Cup quarterfinal match at the Emirates Stadium. Then, they’ll play a mother of all comeback match against Bayern Munich at the Emirates Stadium and knockout them out of this season’s UCL competition.

  6. we would have had a few more points with Cazorla
    He OWNS his position.
    We also tend to win with him
    We missed him last season and this season

    Next season Wenger will say: Cazorla and Wishere are like new signings

    The players who have let me down this season are Ozil and Coquelin
    Ozil was fantastic last season
    Coquelin has played like a mediocre to average DM
    They haven’t played their best
    I think we should get rid of Ramsey
    With Cazorla, Wilshere, Xhaka, Ox, Coquelin, Eleney we don’t really need him
    We could use a Top DM though but that won’t happen with Wenger in charge

  7. The last time we saw Santi, he was a brilliant player. When we see him again, he’ll have missed practically a whole season and will be nearing his mid thirties. As the old saying goes, absence makes the heart grow fonder so it will come as no surprise that by the time he is fit and able to return, Gooners will expect him to be the returning messiah but in reality when he eventually returns there is a high probability that he may not be the same player and may in fact be disappointing. IMO, this is another nail in the coffin of Wenger’s legacy i.e. failing to manage injuries appropriately. Ultimately Wenger needs to go and the team needs a root and branch rebuild.

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