Annual injury fest springs questions about the lack of summer signings. by KM
Hi guys. It’s always bad when you are beaten 3:0 no matter what squad you play, but I cannot really be too surprised by what happened, nor feel too bad about it. We played our reserve squad, which name-wise looked solid, but the quality was really missing.
But before that, those first 20 minutes were the real issue for me. What’s up with this medical staff? I mean hamstrings on professional athletes seems dull to me. Why? Because their physical condition is monitored. Honestly there is something wrong in English football in general with injuries.
Look at the list – Wilshere, Welbeck, Walcott, Oxlade-Chamberlain and Ramsey. There are five British players on the list. They are walking a dangerous road. No matter how good a player is, he’ll never reach a consistent level if he cannot play 30-40 games a season. Besides, those players are young. Getting so many injuries when you are young, means your body is more likely to struggle in the future too.
Look, our squad is short. It is short on quality as our squad players showed and it is short on numbers now too. We are seriously missing players. Worst thing is, Wishere and Welbeck are out ’til sometimes next year, hopefully January, but with Arsenal injuries set-backs are not rare. Ramsey is out for a month. How long Theo and Alex will be out is yet to be announced.
And this is a huge problem. We really need Theo for the away games at Swansea and Bayern. His pace against teams who might have a lot of possession was something that was really working for us. We were already missing Ramsey, the last thing we needed was Walcott to come out, especially after being in play for like 10 minutes? This means he was already on the ropes.
Last point on injuries I would like to make is that Cristiano Ronaldo plays 60+ games a year for Real, yet when was the last time he got a hamstring? What about Messi? I mean, I talked about the mentality shift that rarely occurs in those teams in previous articles and look, Real played PSG away missing Bale and Benzema but still looked more likely to win the game than not, even though the hosts had a fully armed squad sparkling of quality.
I just wish that the squad players at Arsenal could come in solid too, instead they blew a good chance to get noticed by the manager. Nobody will make a big fuzz on missing the CoC, after the success we had last week but, you cannot say this wasn’t coming. Arsenal always have a dip for a few games after a good spell and with the number of rotations you could’ve expected that.
I agree with the rotations though, but the question for me is, if we are going to sack this cup, why do we risk players like Theo and Alex in nervous positions, where we are short? Onto the game, I honestly didn’t see too much of it, but when I saw how easily we were giving away the ball and seeing their second goal I switched the game off.
We lacked quality and understanding between the team and we deservedly lost. The reserve back four we played did themselves no good, and Chambers really failed to live up to the expectations for me. Same for Debuchy who is an international right back.
Anyway though, it’s time to forget what happened and focus on Swansea. The real problem for me dates back to the summer. We always have lots of injuries and we could’ve added a player or two who can come in those positions where we always have injuries and just help us through this tough patch.
We have a favorable fixture list. Swansea away and Tottenham at home are tough games but you look at them thinking they are winnable, after that we play teams like Norwich, Sunderland and Aston Villa. It would be a massive shame if these injuries cost us in the CL and the league title.
Hopefully not though. Cheers.
Konstantin