Injuries

15th September 2015: Wilshere surgery blow as Zagreb boss calls Arsenal ‘frightening’

Posted on by TremendArse

Good evening. Except it isn’t really, because Arsenal have today announced Jack Wilshere will be sidelined for approximately three months as he needs surgery to repair the fractured fibula he sustained in August.

In honesty, the news isn’t as much of a shock as when Danny Welbeck was recently ruled out for a number of months, because in-the-Arsenal-know Sunday Mirror reporter Steve Stammers last weekend revealed the possibility Jack may need to go under the knife. That has now been confirmed and the midfielder will need a small plate inserted into his left leg after his injury failed to heal as expected. The full statement on Arsenal.com read:

Due to a slow healing response from a fracture suffered in August, the club can confirm that Jack Wilshere is to undergo an operation to his left fibula. The decision to intervene has been taken quickly after regular reviews by specialists, who feel that Jack’s scans show that the healing process is not progressing as well as expected. Jack will have surgery in London in the forthcoming days. This will involve inserting a small plate in his left fibula. Jack is likely to be out for approximately three months. Everyone at the club wishes Jack well with his rehabilitation.

Needless to say, it’s devastating news for both the club and a young player, who has been repeatedly sidelined by injury for large chunks of his relatively short career so far. In pre-season, Jack was playing and sounding like a man who was ready to force his way back into the first-team after an injury-ravaged campaign last time around.

It seemed this would finally be the season when the midfielder lived up to his billing as the finest English talent of his generation but with the 12 week lay-off ahead of him now ,and the inevitable period of time after that it will take him to regain match sharpness, another season appears a likely write-off.

The one silver lining I suppose, from the player’s own perspective, is that if all goes well with his recovery and he’s back to something approaching his best in the final couple of months of the season, he’s got the Euros with England to look forward to and he’ll be very fresh to make his mark in France. Hopefully, from an Arsenal perspective, we’ll still be fighting on all fronts for trophies and can welcome back both Wilshere and Welbeck in time to give our squad new impetus at the business end of the season.

As I write this post, Arsene Wenger has been holding his pre-match press conference ahead of tomorrow evening’s Champions League clash with Dinamo Zagreb and the boss is confident Wilshere’s long-term career is not in jeopardy because of his latest injury blow. He said:

Jack Wilshere is young enough to get over this. I’m confident he can make a career his talent deserves.

I’ll have more from Arsene before the game tomorrow, including team news etc but his opposite number for our opening group stage game, Zagreb manager Zoran Mamic, has revealed he was at the Emirates stadium to run the rule over the Gunners on Saturday as we beat Stoke, and described our play as ‘frightening’. He said:

I have watched Arsenal in many games, I went to see them against Stoke this weekend and I got the impression they were playing in second or third gear, and should have won 10-0! It is frightening and fascinating how they play. I believe we will be better than Stoke. Cazorla and Ozil are key Arsenal players, but the team is so strong that danger comes from everywhere.

And he’s right, I suppose we are pretty decent at the whole playing football thing but must guard against complacency and not fall into an oft-trodden trap of thinking turning up is all we need to do to win.

Zagreb matched our unbeaten achievement of 2004 in the Croatian domestic league last term and have players such as Angelo Henriquez – once of Man Utd and national team-mate of Alexis Sanchez – in their side, so they’re likely to be a talented outfit, particularly on home soil.

Right, a bit of a short one today but I’ll be back pre-match tomorrow for some final thoughts before we get our European campaign up and running.

See you then.

10th September 2015: Wenger reveals Wilshere setback, denies lying over Welbeck injury

Posted on by TremendArse

Evening all. Arsene Wenger spoke to the press ahead of Saturday’s game against Stoke this morning and to the surprise of absolutely nobody, the questions posed were as predictable as his answers.

After providing an injury update, in which he revealed Jack Wilshere has had a minor setback and is definitely out of contention for this weekend, the boss was asked about the lack of new arrivals before the transfer window shut last week. Here’s what he had to say:

I have made more than 300 transfers and every time it’s a decision to make. Do you buy the player because he strengthens his squad or not? The solutions we had were not convincing at all. In the end you do not buy to give one hope, you want to buy because the players who come in can help your squad to be stronger. Buying and selling is one way to strengthen your team but that’s not the only way.

I’m pretty sure most Arsenal fans who follow Arsene’s press conferences on a regular basis will have guessed his response before it had left his mouth. That’s not a criticism of the boss, more one of the journos who take it turns to ask the same vague questions and don’t, for instance, ask the boss what he thinks of Luiz Adriano as a finisher when he says the market was bare.

But speaking of strikers, and considering the ones we have are either injured or horribly out of form, Arsene discussed his options up front and gave a vote of confidence to under-fire Olivier Giroud:

Of course, I am confident I have enough cover and enough quality. The only good news after the transfer window is that finally we can talk a bit about football. That is what we love and we want to focus now on [how to improve], which is the quality of the work that we do and the quality of our spirit and the quality of our competitiveness which is needed in every single game. He (Giroud) has my full support and I believe that is part of being a striker. There is no striker in the world who has not been questioned. When he missed a chance and is booed, that can happen.

Arsene also responded to claims in certain quarters that he’d purposely misled fans over Danny Welbeck’s knee injury and said that the forward’s fitness was not a consideration when he scoured the market for a player who could improve the squad:

It doesn’t change anything. You either find someone who strengthens your squad or not. Whether we have players injured or no doesn’t change the problem, that’s what I don’t understand from the media. First of all I am surprised that people accused me of lying when I was in the press conference on Friday morning, [at that point] I did not know Welbeck had a bad setback. I did not lie to you, I gave you the information I had.

Glad that’s sorted. The paranoia was becoming a little boring. And so what if he’s compounded a lie with a denial – if I was looking for a new striker and wanted to negotiate the best price possible, I’m hardly going to make it public that one of my current collection is out of action for the foreseeable. At times I think fans need to stop flattering themselves by thinking what Arsene says is always aimed at them.

Anyway, the boss also pointed out that Arsenal have created more chances than any other team in the Premier League this season and said he is confident we will soon relocate our shooting boots:

We have created the chances and that’s what we want to continue to do. I believe that the finishing is a bit cyclical, up and down, and we are the team who has created the most chances since the start of the season, so let’s just continue to focus on the quality of our game. It is about the efficiency and the quality of our game, we can score goals and I am not worried about that. We have Alexis, we have Giroud and we have Walcott. It is a massive opportunity for them of course.

The hope of course, is that they can make the most of that opportunity and if they could start in our next game that would be very welcome indeed. I think both Walcott and Giroud really need to prove themselves as capable of being our long-term, first-choice striker in theses next few months with Welbeck out and the market closed, because if they can’t do it now, the likelihood is they never will.

And as far as Alexis as a striker goes, I don’t see it myself. It didn’t work on the few occasions we tried it last season but more importantly, I think Sanchez is far more Eden Hazard than he is Sergio Aguero, if you know what I mean.

Back tomorrow.

9th September 2015: Mikel’s getting his mojo back

Posted on by TremendArse

Welcome to Wednesday on TremendArse. The internationals are all done and dusted and with with a bit of luck, we’ll hear from Arsene Wenger tomorrow as he usually provides the official site with the latest injury news on a Thursday.

Having had a quick look around, I can’t see any obvious injury concerns being reported for those who’ve been away with their countries. And of course, Jack Wilshere is due back any time now, so we’ll have one more option available for us to freshen up a side which has been struggling to spark in to life so far this season.

Whether Jack’s ready for this weekend is doubtful but with Danny Welbeck and Tomas Rosicky our only other long-term absentees, we can at least be thankful of a squad in pretty good health overall.

One man who hasn’t been away and is just glad to be fully fit after an injury-plagued campaign last time around is club captain Mikel Arteta. The Spaniard has been speaking to Arsenal Player and expressing his joy at being back among his colleagues, saying:

I really missed it [when I was out]. I had a really tough period last year after my last game in November and I went through some really difficult moments with my surgery. For me it is the frustration [that is the hardest thing] because there is always pain and you are trying to get back everyday and you spend a lot of time doing rehabilitation. When the players go outside for a training session, you feel wasted. They come back, they travel, they have different times to you and you don’t spend much time with them. Personally I don’t feel productive. I’m here because I want to play games, make this team more successful and be a part of it. When I’m not able to do that I still have to contribute, be positive, be good around the other players, give advice and try to help my team-mates. But it is not the same. But I worked really hard and tried to stay positive, do my best and here I am again now, earning my place in the squad and ready to help the team.

And the former Everton man also explained how he’s used his time on the sidelines to analyse games in greater depth, and said his focus now is on being in the best possible shape to aid the team’s cause when called upon:

I just watch the game and things come to my head naturally – things that I believe we can do better or things we are having trouble with, weaknesses of the other team or if we are having a few problems. You are excited but nervous as you don’t know when you are going to get thrown in. When you get thrown in you want to be ready for it with a good warm-up and ready to make an impact to help the team achieve the win.

Although no longer first-choice when everyone is fit, Arteta is clearly a great influence around the squad. He speaks well, by all accounts in a model professional and as he’s shown in cameos this season, can add another layer of protection for the defence when we need to close games out.

What I would point out, is that we also have Mathieu Flamini for that role and I don’t think we need both in all honesty. Arteta is clearly the more cultured in possession of the two but I really think at least one of them should have made way for a younger, better model this summer.

That’s not to say both can’t do a job because I think they can. But sentimentality can be costly and if I’m being blunt, shouldn’t be influential in top level sport decision-making. It’s sport after all, and regardless of how much you’ve done for a club or how long you’ve been there, if there’s somebody out there better and available, I’m afraid that’s tough luck.

Luckily for the likes of Arteta and Flamini, they have a boss who isn’t as ruthless and cold as many others but then perhaps that is one of Arsene’s great weaknesses. It can be a fine line between belief in your players, and blindness to their limitations.

It goes without saying that I hope they both prove me wrong over the course of this campaign, and we don’t rue the refusal, or failure, to bring in another defensively-minded central midfielder before the deadline passed last week.

Til Thursday.

3rd September 2015: With Welbeck out, can Campbell be this season’s Coquelin?

Posted on by TremendArse

The rapid returns from injury of Danny Welbeck and Jack Wilshere now obviously take on added importance  – hopefully both aren’t far from full fitness.

This time yesterday, I, like all Arsenal fans, was blissfully unaware that Danny Welbeck had already undergone surgery on the knee injury he suffered in April and would be unavailable for ‘a period of months’.

The last update on his fitness had suggested the former Man Utd striker would return to the first-team fold shortly after the current international break, so today’s news combined with our failure to recruit a new striker before Tuesday’s transfer deadline, now leaves us worryingly short of central striking options.

After Olivier Giroud and Theo Walcott, if you discount Alexis Sanchez – who in his few cameos in the position last term was far from convincing – we’re now left with Joel Campbell as the most natural option at the tip of the attack. I’m almost speechless at how quickly the air of pre-season optimism engulfing the club has been blown away and replaced by clouds of impending doom.

I can understand it of course. A lot of Arsenal supporters when we unveiled Petr Cech at the end of June, were assessing a squad that had finished the previous campaign third in the league and having secured a second successive FA Cup with a convincing win at Wembley and expecting us to mount a serious challenge for the title. Perhaps even manage a sustained run in Europe.

There was also the added anticipation of further ‘Gunner Galactico’ signings to follow in the footsteps of Cech, Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil to Emirates stadium. After all, the new TV deals had armed the league with obscene money to strengthen squads and players all around Europe were expected to be easy prey. We were looking like a million bucks with the promise of a further lorryload of dough. Then came a perfect pre-saseon, including Arsene Wenger’s first-ever win over Chelsea to secure the Community Shield and hope had turned into expectation. Requests into demands.

Yet after two wins, a draw and a defeat from our opening four league games, in which we looked a shadow of the team who sailed merrily through pre-season, and the lack off any additions at all before the transfer window closed on Tuesday, familiar grievances about the manager’s work and the squad’s quality have come hurtling back like Francis Coquelin closing down an opposition attack.

It goes without saying that collectively we must improve to keep pace with a far stronger Man City squad to last year’s, but has any other team suggested as title-winners improved? It’s too early to know definitively of course but given the start of the league season, and looking at their transfer business with the window now closed, I’s say no.

In a very particular order; Tottenham have no chance, Liverpool have lost their influential – if past it – captain, as well as their brightest star in Raheem Sterling, Man United have certainly added a number of players but discarded at least just as many, with those arriving far from certain to be of a higher calibre, whilst Chelsea have lost Didier Drogba and Cech from their dressing room, and only really added the, admittedly undoubted, quality of Pedro to their first-choice selection. Plus the Blues have a manager who’s as likely to cause mayhem at a club, as he is to win a trophy. So comparatively speaking, when you consider all that, we’re not badly positioned at all from my perspective.

But to go back to the beginning of this this post, whilst cover for Coquelin was my personal, primary reinforcement priority, our striking situation with Welbeck out for ‘months’ means another player will now have an opportunity he’d otherwise not have been afforded to provide the ‘internal solution’ Arsene often trumpets.

I have to admit too, that as a fan, I get as much joy from seeing an academy player, or a young unestablished hopeful, go on to make a lasting impact on our first-team, as I do from seeing a world class new signing sprinkle our play with stardust. More so maybe. But I appreciate that’s just me and if you were to ask me my preference exactly as we’re struggling to score a consolation against Dinamo Zagreb, who lead five nil at Emirates stadium in added time, I’d almost certainly have a different opinion.

But until then, I’m genuinely excited at the possibility of Campbell rediscovering his Man Utd-slaying form, his World Cup scoring skills, and proving himslef a left-footed, Samuel Eto’o-style striking sensation for us. This year’s Coquelin-esque, late-comer to the fans’ conscience as a first-team starter, who’ll save us millions in the next summer market and negate the need to sign Robert Lewandowski. 

Seriously though, I still haven’t seen nearly enough of our Costa Rican to form an opinion on him either way, but it’s having the chance to do so that I’m relishing, when the real stuff returns after this international break.

Finally, good luck to Welbeck on what will hopefully be the speediest recovery from such an injury anyone’s ever seen. Just make sure you’re back in time for the Champions League semis Welbz!

Back on Friday.

6th August 2015: Wilshere woe as he cracks left fibula

Posted on by TremendArse

Poor Jack. Just as he thought he’d completed pre season free from injury and nearing peak condition – BANG – he’s ruled out for another sustained period, with what the club today confirmed as being a hairline crack to his left fibula.

It’s clearly a massive set-back for the club, but the player himself must be even more devastated given how he’s suffered so many injuries in his relatively short career so far.

Arsene Wenger, who had said over the weekend that the injury would only side-line Wilshere for a ‘matter of days’, revealed his shock at it’s now confirmed severity, saying:

I had a bad surprise because it is a hairline crack in his fibula that makes him a few weeks out. There is minimal damage apart from the bone damage – there is no damage at all apart from that. It was a collision in training and it was all completely accidental.

A fibula bone (shown in red)

Now obviously I didn’t see the collision but a general point on Jack is that as much as I’m sure we all love his determination in challenges and accept that it’s a representation of his steely character, I can’t help but feel he could learn a little about injury avoidance from somebody like his former England colleague Frank Lampard.

Although I think there’s nothing he could pick up footballistically from studying the former Chelsea man – apart from maybe how to score so many deflected goals or put away penalties – he could look at how Lampard managed to break that consecutive appearances record by being a bit more intelligent and selective in his tackles/collisions etc.

Anyway, we can take some heart I suppose, from the fact Arsene says there is ‘minimal damage’ besides to the bone itself which, having had a quick look online, suggests no tissue damage which should mean a more rapid recovery.

In terms of the impact on the squad, we have one less option in central midfield and the three attacking roles behind the striker, yet we still look comfortably stocked to cover for his absence.

That said, for me anyway, it’s a stark reminder of how fragile a footballer can be, and although Jack’s qualities can be replicated by others in the squad, the same cannot be said of Francis Coquelin, so a purchase in his position may now become a priority if it wasn’t already.

Elsewhere, Arsene had injury updates on other members of the squad today, revealing Danny Welbeck and Tomas Rosicky were on ‘progressive recoveries’. A bit ambiguous there from the boss, but I suppose he has to be cautious with putting time-frames on returns to full fitness, particularly given Wilshere’s amended prognosis.

Plus for all the advances in medicine, it’s worth considering that even the best doctors in the world still, relatively speaking of course, know very little about the human body, and hence recovery.

If only we could bottle Alexis Sanchez’s powers of physical endurance because despite only returning to training with the team this week, the Chilean wasn’t completely ruled out from playing in the Premier League opener against West Ham on Sunday by Arsene:

Alexis is back in training but I don’t think he will be involved on Sunday, it is a bit early maybe. We have to decide that at the end of the week, but I don’t think he will be involved.

Speaking to the official site, the boss also explained how he was far from surprised at seeing pictures emerge over recent weeks of Sanchez training whilst still technically on his summer break:

Alex without running around is not Alex, you know. You can’t imagine him lying on the beach somewhere and not moving! He came back in good fitness shape so that is quite positive, but I am not surprised by that because I can’t imagine him lying around for four weeks and doing nothing. That wouldn’t be him.

Nope. That’d be more like me. In fact, I’m due a little rest up, with maybe a small, savoury snack or two.

Laters.