There has been much written over the years about Arsenal’s “injury curse” and it looks like Mikel Arteta is suffering just as much as Arsene Wenger and Unai Emery did when they were in charge.
And as usual it has been our defenders that have suffered the most. Mikel Arteta decided to sign Cedric Soares and Pablo Mari during the summer, despite their injury problems, but we are still yet to see either of them on the pitch this season. The same with Calum Chambers and Rob Holding, although the latter has now got a couple of games under his belt.
David Luiz has only managed 4 starts in this campaign, Mustafi has also been out for some time and has only managed 44 minutes in the League so far, and William Saliba was not even considered ready to include in the playing squads, along with Sokratis.
Arteta though is hopeful that Mari will be able to be included in the squad very soon as he told Arsenal.com: “He’s looking really good in training. Obviously, he had a difficult surgery, He had a screw and sometimes when you have an external body inside it can react in an unexpected way and it was causing some inflammation and irritation in the joint all the time and his ankle was swelling. So we had to take that out again which was a little bit of a setback, but he’s been working really hard and looks really good in training.
So does Arteta think that Mari still figures in his plans? “Yes he does. We’ve been hit really hard with some big injuries, not only Pablo but Cedric as well, since he joined here he’s had two or three different incidents.
“Gabi Martinelli has been out for such a long time, Calum Chambers got injured three weeks after I was here and he still hasn’t played a single game. He’s still recovering. It is what it is. What I can say is that the approach of those players and the way they’ve been trying to work to get back to their best has been phenomenal in all cases. Let’s hope that we can have them, we can use them and they can feel part of what we’re doing.”
All I can say is “Thank God we got Gabriel this summer”…..
How come Arsenal keep getting these injuries in training we must be doing something wrong
Here we go another excuse …hahaha…you lot are improving on this day by day…🤣😂😂🤣…funny part is some of Arsenal fans here bwere laughing at Chelsea for letting go of Willian and signing all those young dynamic players. They were saying it’s one thing to buy these quality players but they won’t gel together blah blah blah …now you see them n they will only get better with time. Have fan in middle of table when season finishes even with so much money we spent. But the point is M. Arteta is the best !!!
Yeah the injury excuse simply doesn’t resound with most who want value for their season ticket.
Some players we’ve had have been spending more time on the treatment table than the pitch. Ever since we moved to Emirates.
Why isn’t the money being spent on making sure this never happens again?
The defensive injury list excuse isn’t floating this year. We have a squad of CB’s and Sokratis and Saliba never got a sniff so far, so can’t use CB’s injuries as excuse.
Secondly, Mari barely kicked a ball in his Arsenal career but apparently he’s in starting contention and Saliba not even registered in Euro league?
We don’t even play with true LB or RB so not like the injuries hamper Arteta’s tactics. Arteta has a harsh learning curve and he’s around 1 year in.
Arteta has some solid, quality players at the club; Auba, Saka, Martinelli, Partey, Gabriel, and Tierney.
He should play them in their best positions and to their strengths rather than hybrid nonsense to nullify opponents with his negative football.
Hopefully over last two weeks he’s taken a long look at the players as well as himself to identify the problem areas. If Arteta hasn’t questioned himself I don’t expect to see much improvement if any at all.
we have plenty of option at CB position, as in middfieed & attack.
He spoke about attacking issues but we have so many options beside banning Ozil…
Arteta has no clue at all,incapable to lay 11 names on sheet, with the most complete team we had in a decade!
No players nor team issue; Arteta lack of experience as a coach is our only PB; a major blow with such a team & club!
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looking at top6 today, 6 great coaches, Southampton’s is not known but defenetly up there, Wolves and of course Guardiola can both be added.
i can name few more which puts Arteta in 11th to 15th place we will end up….
200M on players in 2 seasons, saving on coach! Nuts!