Right now all of us Arsenal fans are feeling a bit down-hearted as we are on the verge of an early Champions League exit and have slipped a bit in the Premier League, taking just two points from a possible nine and being overtaken by Man United and Leicester.
That away game with Olympiacos was always going to be hard but the mounting injury problems, especially the hamstring strain of Alexis Sanchez has made it look even more likely that we will be playing Europa League football on Thursday nights soon.
That injury list has really knocked us back and it has also triggered a lot of anger and frustration among the Arsenal faithful. After all we are back to the same old story aren’t we? Well no actually, because all this talk of the club still having an underlying injury problem is not actually backed up by the numbers.
In fact ESPN are reporting that we are actually doing a lot better on the injury front this season than most of our rivals.
We have had 24 injuries in total, just a little over the EPL average of 20.5 and fewer than Man City (35), United (31) and Liverpool (25) and that is only the 7th worst in the division. We are also faring better than most when it comes to the length of these injuries and the amount of days lost to injury overall.
The improvement in these stats from last season is nothing short of amazing, so has our new fitness expert Shad Forsythe had the positive effect that Arsene Wenger brought him to the club for?