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”…..