Francis Coquelin has claimed that the mass of injuries suffered during the season has cost the club their chance to lift the Premier League trophy.
Arsenal sit 13 points behind surprise league leaders Leicester City currently, with only six matches left to play. Despite a huge winning streak and a number of other results going our way, our chance to win the league is all but dead.
With all of our regular title rivals all suffering abysmal seasons, pundits and supporters alike have claimed we have missed out on our best chance of winning our first league title since 2004, and Coquelin is claiming that injuries have been their downfall this year.
He said: “It’s difficult. The league is not over yet, but it’s difficult, I give you that. It’s frustrating because this season we had quite a lot of injuries at the same time. Santi [Cazorla], Alexis [Sanchez], I got injured as well, and when the team was in a good run.
“It was difficult to take, but injuries are always going to happen in a season. At the end of the day you have to get the result. It is frustrating, but we had this February, March period where we lost to Swansea, got knocked out of the Champions League, and lost to Manchester United, so it was difficult.”
According to ArsenalReport.com we have had a total of 1,552 days missed due to these injuries, with Alexis Sanchez, Coquelin, Cazorla, Wilshere, Oxlade-Chamberlain and Rosicky all having missed over 50 days each.
Injuries clearly played their part in our downfall this term, but for me, Arsene Wenger should be well aware that we ALWAYS lose a number of players during the season, and should have used the summer window last year to bring in two or three outfield players (instead of 0).
The end of season review will surely incorporate that, and the manager will surely be told he must invest in the coming close-season. How many more players do you think we needed this season?