Evening all. The shock of Danny Welbeck’s latest long-term injury is still seeping into Arsenal systems and his manager Arsene Wenger today discussed his striker’s misfortune when he spoke to Arsenal Player.

Blaming the incident on pure bad luck, Arsene explained how he’d been cautious in fielding the former Manchester United man after he made a dramatic comeback from his previous ten-month spell on the sidelines by heading home a last-gasp winner against Leicester City in February. Arsene said:

We’re all devastated, and Danny even more so. We can only feel sad and support Danny now in order to get him back. It was basically from an anonymous tackle. The difference between the tackle and the severity of the injury is baffling. We don’t understand that but we have to accept the verdict and we have to live with it. Danny has to deal with it unfortunately. We just have to give him the maximum support we can and show him that we trust he can come back. He scored goals and when he came on he had an impact. I pushed him in and out of the team because I knew he’d been out for a year. Sometimes for the big games I kept him out to recover from the efforts he has made. Sometimes people accused me of being too cautious but I knew that he did not play for a year and the intensity of the Premier League is so exceptional that you have to be cautious. The injury was accidental. I don’t think there’s anyone to blame, not our opponents or medical staff. It was completely an accident.

Meanwhile, Welbeck’s Arsenal team-mate Aaron Ramsey – no stranger himself to serious injury of course after Ryan ‘not a malicious bone in his body’ Shawcross broke his leg with a horror ‘tackle’ in 2010 – said he’s ‘gutted’ for Danny and wished him a speedy comeback when he spoke to Sky Sports. He said:

I have spoken to him and obviously he is very disappointed and gutted. He was in good shape, good form and he had a great opportunity to show what he could do for England in the summer. I’m gutted for him as well but I am sure he will back from it stronger and I hope he has a speedy recovery.

Needless to say I hope Welbz makes a miraculously fast recovery and is back banging ’em in for us just as we’ve established a 25-point lead over Pep Guardiola’s second-placed Manchester City in February 2017 …

Moving on now and Petr Cech has been discussing Arsenal’s ‘strange season’ and explaining why he hopes the club can build on it by going from ‘good’ to ‘great’ next term. He said:

It was a very strange season in a way. If you look at the number of injuries we had, it is not a big number compared to previous years or compared to other clubs. It’s not a big difference but unfortunately for us, every time we’ve had an injury, it’s been long-term. We had a great squad at the start of the season. Danny was coming back, Jack was coming back, and it was a very strong group. Unfortunately Jack got injured right before the start of the campaign, Danny had the same problem, Tomas had the same problem, and these were all long-term injuries. Santi and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain became long-term injuries too. If you have so many important players out with long-term injuries, it does give a chance to everybody else, but it can hurt you at certain times. If you have seven games in 21 days and your opponent has had six days off to prepare, you don’t have the advantage of rotating players. I thought we did so well most of the time to be able to cope with that, but unfortunately in the end we lacked a bit of energy in February and March when we dropped points. This is where the difference was made. Overall, it’s been a good season, not one you would look back on and call a brilliant season, but there were a lot of positives and things to build on. Hopefully we can step up and have a great season next year.

Let’s hope the big man’s right.

See you on Friday.