ARSENAL SEASON ON EDGE AFTER SELF-INFLICTED INJURY CRISIS

KAI WRECKED IN DUBAI TRAINING SESSION, WHO IS TO BLAME?

Kai Havertz is out for the season.

The nightmare headline we were all fearing has landed aggressively on our laps during a week that was supposed to be a safe space for our players.

Instead of meditating, eating expensive Salt Bae steak, and spending time with the club masseuse, Arteta had him on the training pitch doing pressing drills. The output was a hamstring injury so bad it’s wiped him out for 4 months.

It is negligent to break your players in training during a 10 day break designed to bring them back to life but this is an all too familiar pattern under Arteta.

At core, his belief system is very much tied to the idea that fatigue is a state of mind, and big players don’t get injured. Well, we’ve had the trifecta this season of our three most robust players all breaking down at different stages of the season. Arsenal, in a squad crises, managed to lose 2 of its 5 remaining forwards in the space of 11 days after the transfer window closed.

You don’t need to dig too deep to find the guiding principles of Arteta’s thinking.

"Look at the top players in the world, they play 70 matches and every three days and make the difference and win the game."

"You want to be at the top, you have to be able to do that. If we start to put something different in the minds of our young players I think we are making a huge mistake because then it’s one yes, one no, now I don’t play, on astroturf I don’t play, I don’t want that."

Just last week he was convincing himself that Kai Havertz was genetically robust.

‘He has played a lot of football but his robustness, his availability is unbelievable. When you ask him, he feels better when he is playing every three days.’

It’s hard to fathom how you can be a former professional athlete and believe a 24 year old when they say they actually feel better playing 3 times a week. He went on to really double down on the justification of playing him so much.

Genetically, he is a powerhouse. He is so well-built. He is a player that anything you ask him, he is happy to do: to run in zone six, to be very robust, to make long distances. His body absorbs everything. And then he really looks after himself.

When you see the professional, how he lives his life, it is immaculate. He does more than any other player there. That is not a coincidence. And then I think he is so intelligent.

He knows what is good for him and what is not. We know how to manage him and we believe that when he says something it is for the right reason, not because he wants to avoid something. When something works, don't touch him.

This was pure copium at the time and now the reality has played out and it’s hard to imagine how we manage a charge to the end of the season.

Our options are Ethan Nwaneri as a 9 and Sterling on the right… or we might bring Merino in as a makeshift 9, which really doesn’t fill me with much hope, considering he’s only scored 37 goals in his entire career. Reading that the club see him like Marouane Fellaini made me do a bit of sick in my mouth.

The club cannot be absolved of responsibility here. I don’t care about the January transfer window. You are clutching at straws if you think a cash-rich Arsenal passed on the right types of players to spite themselves, or you are suggesting that in a tight league race, anybody was the right body to get us over the line.

The focus should be on the gambles we took (or did not take) last summer. Not going into the season with adequate cover for Saka (I don’t count Ethan, even though his rise as a winger has been awesome) and Odegaard was really poor considering the runway we had… and not getting a striker knowing that Gabi Jesus was always incredibly prone to injury looks worse by the day. We were short on numbers going into the summer knowing we had a manager who doesn’t really rotate. That was a huge miss that needs deeper exploration. How did everyone agree that was the right thing to do after a summer that had Euro’s and Copa America?

It’s hard to fathom why the gates were pulled up on investment in a year the club knew City were probably going to crash. There is always a tendency to start going too hard at unknowns when things are going badly. But we aren’t talking about the fact last summer Edu was dreaming about treble pay and a Football CEO role and we also exited our CEO from the season prior. While our summer was floundering, Edu was interviewing with Forest. Did that leave a power vacuum? Did processes clog up in the summer and slow communications on getting things over the line? Arsenal had moved like monsters the prior 3 summers… but the year we lose exec leadership, the summer was really disappointing? Hard not to wonder about these things.

I cannot for the life of me understand how on the precipice of either a Liverpool or Man City collapse… we decided to pretty much stay static with the match day squad. After dropping £700m over 5 years, the summer that was supposed to be cherry-on-top slipped away from us. The Arsene Wenger warchest was opened and it had a letter that said ‘no bueno, Senor Arteta.’

But don’t be blinded by transfers. There’s a team that is top of the league, that also finished top of their Champions League group, and their summer and January spend has been sub £40m.

Liverpool finished last season:

• Losing their legendary coach

• Players arguing on the sideline

• Darwin Nunez refusing to shake the hand of Klopp

• Liverpool running out of gas in a major way

They started the season with:

• A new manager without elite level pedigree

• No signings of note

• Three of their major players, generational talents, not signing on to new deals

• No serious back-ups to their very best players

… and they’ve managed the season like kings. No injuries. There was no fatigue because Slot had dialed down the intensity without breaking, which is what made that squad great. No reaction to their best player saying he’s leaving. No problems emanating from Trent going to Madrid. Their season has been truly blessed. The difference between genius and FRAUDS in Premier League football is very narrow. If it goes to shit at Anfield, guess what Liverpool fans will point to? Lack of transfers. Lack of foresight to tie mega players down. NOT BACKING A NEW MANAGER WITH ANYTHING.

I say this, not to justify where Arsenal are, but to highlight that all three of the biggest teams took massive gambles this season and only one is going to get an almighty payout.

So where do we go from here?

We look at this video.

… and start building up our Hopium health bar.

Pray for a miracle. Pray for the swift return of Saka, Martinelli and White. Hope that we don’t get any more injuries to players who are doing ALL the minutes right now.

Also… keep perspective. We’re 3rd in the Champions League and in the last 16. We are second in the league with a fairly decent run of limited games over the next 7 weeks. Arteta is very capable of finding solutions.

Let’s see what he’s got.