On the face of it, the latest injury news revealed by Arsene Wenger today on the official Arsenal website is pretty positive stuff and must be a huge relief to Jack Wilshere in particular. The midfielder’s return date from the hairline fracture of the fibula he picked up in training over a week ago should be much sooner than we were led to believe.
So instead of the months that the football media were originally talking about, the whole time on the sidelines for Wilshere looks like being just four weeks.
Wenger said, “We said Jack would be out for four weeks, and he’s in the second week now so he’s on schedule.”
So why is this bad news? Well it means that Jack should be back in training some time before the end of August. And that means that he could well be available for Roy Hodgson to select for the two England internationals coming up. The three lions travel to San Marino and then host Switzerland on the 5th and 8th of September and if the young Gunner is fit he will almost certainly play.
Whereas Wilshere struggles to get a regular place in the Arsenal team, he is a key man for England and there is little that Wenger can do to stop him playing. Those two games in a matter of days are not what we want for a player just back from the latest in a long line of injury problems.
So I for one am hoping that this latest prognosis is a little on the optimistic side.