We spoke earlier about the defensive crisis that Arsenal are going through at the moment, and discussed whether Mikel Arteta may have no choice but to play Kieran Tierney. Now the boss himself has confirmed this outlook and admitted that it is causing big problems wit his team selections.
“It is what it is,” Arteta said on Arsenal.com:. “At the end if we have to accept the challenge, it’s opportunities for other players to do that. In the ideal scenario, we have to be in charge to make those decisions. It’s forcing us to make it for the wrong reasons, but as well, we need to accept the reality and move forwards.”
He goes on to say why things are so bad at the moment, especially with the massive fixture congestion causing even more fatigue and therefore injuries. “We have a lot of joint injuries that are very difficult to predict. We have some through tackles for example that again are quite difficult to predict. The other one probably is overload – the amount of minutes to play.
“The knock-on effect of not having one or two players available means it puts more strain and minutes on somebody else. That’s not a good change because the consequences and load of all the players starts to be too high, much higher than what you want to do, but it is where we are.”
It was much discussed on JA this week about why Arteta disrupted our starting line-up while leaving our only dedicated left-back, Kieran Tierney, on the bench, but it seems that he may have had a rethink ahead of tonight’s game against Monaco. He said about the Scotsman: Yeah, he is ready and he’s training really well and he’s going to have an opportunity for sure with the way the team is looking at the moment,”
“It’s for that reason and because he’s earned it as well with the way he’s behaved and the way he’s been with us because he’s willing to do it and when that happens you have to give opportunities to those kind of players.”
It will be very interesting indeed to see how Arteta sets up his starting XI tonight, and I can’t wait!
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Say what you want about Arteta, and he certainly has some flaws, but I have never witnessed a season of such disruption to the team.
Surely Arsenal have to get a couple of players in Jan – a defender and an attacker.
So Tierney has earned it as the gaffer says, but only gets a chance because no one else is available? Just say we are short and no one else is available, don’t dress it up with nonsense.
We have too many injury prone players, and their availability is like a coin flip.
I like Tomiyasu, he’s consistent and quality, but he’s not reliably fit.
Tomiyasu, Zinchenko, Jesus, Partey, seem to get injured from a strong breeze. Perhaps it’s time to move on and bring in players who have better fitness.
Zinchenko just came back, made a cameo appearance, and injured again.
Tomiyasu has been MIA for a while, perhaps time to move on.
Perhaps you should add to that list, Calafiori, who had injury problems before he moved to Arsenal ?
Team news out and Myles is starting ahead of him. 🙂
Priceless, Arteta hinted that Tierney could get a game tonight, and then picks a kid over him. Priceless, absolutely priceless.🤦♂️