I am talking about one Arsenal woe in particular here, the injury crisis that has left the squad stretched to breaking point and even more specifically the name of Alexis Sanchez being on that injury list.
Arsene Wenger was always going to come under fire for this, especially after he made the unwise decision of telling the football media about the ‘hamstring alert’ that the Chile international had early last week. So we now have people like John Cross in The Mirror blasting the Arsenal boss for taking too many risks with the striker as well as not signing enough players in the summer to be able to rotate his squad.
Cross is an Arsenal fan and is clearly frustrated but he may have gone too far in ‘guessing’ that Wenger ignored advice from the Arsenal medical staff on Alexis. And another report in The Mirror carried the latest on a long line of rants from the Dutch fitness coach Raymond Verheijen, who seems to spend his life waiting for another Arsenal player to get injured so he can attack Wenger, despite never having worked with the Frenchman.
That report also suggests that the blame may lie with the player himself as he has previous form picking up injuries because he simply refuses to rest or take it a bit easy in a game. An ESPN report suggests the same and points to the on fire Leicester striker Jamie Vardy who has been playing through the pain barrier and will continue to do so.
Then we have the new Liverpool boos Jurgen Klopp telling Daniel Sturridge to basically man up and admitting that he wants to rest players but can’t. So is all the criticism of Wenger a bit unfair? I would say so.