Well we have only played one round of the International matches, and only have Arsenal players scored quite a few goal (as in Walcott, Cazorla and Sanchez) but suddenly our opponents have become severely weakened. Is this the year where injuries actually work in our favour for a change?
We all believe that Man City are our biggest rivals for the title, and already they have lost Aguero for a month, the Argentinian striker said after he was stretchered off last night: ‘I think I’ll be a month without playing,’ Aguero said. ‘I’ll go to the AFA national team compound to carry on with treatment. To recover from the tear I’ll surely need a month.
‘I’d been playing very frequently and was in doubt [for Thursday’s match] until the last minute, but as a player you always want to be there and never know what can happen.’
So that is probably our most serious striker for a Premier League title out of the way. The worry is that Man City knew he his hamstring was a little fragie before he went, which is why I a bit worried about Alexis Sanchez, as the international are more likely to risk their best players whatever the effect on the domestic League.
After that Man City’s problems were compounded when David Silva was also taken off while playing for Spain with ‘a bad sprain of the internal lateral ligament of the right ankle’, which means he is also likely to miss the next few weeks of action for City, and we have to remember that both of them are likely to be unavailable for the six-pointer against Man United. This can only be good news for Arsenal. Although we do not like to gloat on other teams injuries we have to admit that it is usually our players that come back from international duty with long term injuries, so maybe luck is actually on our side for a change….
Meanwhile, Man United’s Sebastien Schweinsteiger suffered an injury with Germany, while Wayne Rooney missed yesterdays England win over Estonia, which not only may dent the confidence of a man that has scored just one in the last three months, but it also gave Theo Walcott the chance to replace him (and score) for England.
Lastly we hear that Mario Gotze has been ruled out for the crucial Arenal game against Bayern Munich (and the return leg) so that will be one less player Arsenal have to worry about, not that Bayern have more than enough stars to cover for him!
I think Aguero and Silva could be the biggest pluses for Arsenal, but I refuse to gloat just yet as we have one more round of games to play and i am VERY worried about Sanchez, which would be as big a loss to us as Aguero would be for Man City.
Fingers crossed for the next round of games, especially for Alexis..