I have been banging on for over two years now about how, if Arsenal did not have bad luck then we would have no luck at all. Some of that feeling came from decisions by referees and their assistants and some from the cup draws we wre getting, but mostly it was down to the crippling and seemingly never ending injury crisis at the club.
Arsene Wenger certainly took the problem seriously enough and he set in motion a thorough study of the problems afflicting our players. Some of those problems were unavoidable and a normal part of being a professional footballer, like Jack Wilshere’s ankle damage from bad tackle last season and Mathieu Debuchy damaging his shoulder after being needlessly launched into the advertising boards by one of the thugs at Stoke City.
But it also seemed to take us longer to get our players back and our injury problems seemed to keep coming back and this led to a couple of changes to the backroom staff, with Shad Forsythe being appointed head of performance enhancement after a successful decade with the Germany national team and James Haycock replacing Declan Lynch as the club physio.
And now Arsenal have made another key signing in an attempt to keep the injury problems to a minimum, with The Mirror reporting that the coach Barry Solan is set to start working alongside Forsyth.
I really believe that our injury issues have been the main thing holding us back in the last couple of years and so this signing could well be a big boost to our title chances. Do you agree?