Before I go on to report the ins and outs of the current injury situation at Arsenal Football Club, I would just like to remind you about how our club is having it much worse than the other clubs fighting with us for the Premier League title and any other trophy we are hoping to win.
You can see the table of EPL clubs and the number of players each has missing with various illness and injury issues on physioroom.com and while the Gunners may not be right at the top for a change, we are at number five with seven players out of action. Compare to that to Liverpool (11th), Man City (12th), Man United (15th), Tottenham (19th) and Chelsea right at the bottom with not a single player unavailable.
Well there is nothing that we or Arsene Wenger can do about that other than to get on with things and try to ensure that it does not damage us in terms of Premier League points this weekend. The Frenchman revealed the latest on the likes of Theo Walcott and Hector Bellerin on the Arsenal website today and at least it looks like the situation is improving.
He said, “Basically we have the same players available as last week, plus Koscielny is coming back, Petr Cech is back in the squad, Mesut Ozil and Alexis as well.
“Hector Bellerin is still out, Francis Coquelin is still out – they could make next week, they are not far.
“Walcott is still out. He is one of the players who doesn’t come back. But he was not rested last week, he was injured. He is now out for three-and-a-half weeks, and I think he will not be available for Burnley. He will need another week, two more weeks.
“Not concerned [about Theo], because it was at the start a little calf problem, but he was not comfortable when he started to train again and we had to pull him out again.”
So next week we could have Bellerin, Gibbs and Coquelin back and the week after that could see the return of Mertesacker, Debuchy and Walcott but for this weekend the Gunners need to take all three points off Swansea in Wales and even with our injury problems there is more than enough quality in the side to do that, isn’t there?
Bob.