Mixed news on the injury front to begin this morning. There’s a chance Jack Wilshere might be available for Sunday’s trip to Chelsea although he’s a doubt for tomorrow night’s Champions League clash, while Mikel Arteta’s calf strain seems to be the bog standard three week job.
However, the Aaron Ramsey hamstring seems a bit more than routine. Reports say the scan results were worse than feared and he could miss ‘at least’ a month. You don’t have to cast your mind back too far to recall that it was a hamstring problem that kept Lukas Podolski out from August to December last season, so they can be quite serious indeed.
There’s no indication yet that Ramsey’s is anywhere near that bad, but he’s obviously done himself some real damage. It means he’ll miss this week, the Wales games during the Interlull, and it may be the start of November before he’s back properly which is, despite his form, a real blow.
Quite how the manager decides to cope with his absence remains to be seen. Wilshere is the obvious choice to play closest to the deep-lying midfielder, but I do wonder if there’s room to give Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain a chance in the position Arsene Wenger has always said will be his in the long-term.
There was an interesting snippet in a Mikel Arteta interview in the Sunday Times this week:
He’s just gone 21 now and is at the age where he really needs to be playing regularly in order to develop to his full potential. His pace, strength and desire to get forward to make things happen mean he’s well suited to play wide. That’s where most of his games have been played for us, but those qualities also mean he’s an ideal candidate to replace Ramsey in the midfield.
Some of his best games for us have been in in the centre of the pitch and at a time when we’re struggling to click, maybe it’s worth thinking of something a little different. The manager seems to want to play with Ramsey and Wilshere in certain games, and I doubt that outlook is going to change simply because the Welshman is absent. In those circumstances Oxlade-Chamberlain seems an interesting option to me.
There was a moment in the Dortmund game a couple of weeks ago which, to me anyway, also illustrated his readiness. When Jack Wilshere got crunched in midfield and went down, arm in the air after a kick on the ankle, the Germans drove into our box. Only brilliant tracking back from the Ox, a perfectly timed tackle, prevented them from making the game 3-0. He’s switched on defensively too despite his forward thinking attitude.
Sometimes you have to give a player a chance to see him really flourish and it just feels like we’re on the cusp on that with Oxlade-Chamberlain. We’ve got options for the right and left hand side, Walcott will be back soon also which means we’re well stocked there, but with the heart of the midfield still an area that’s not functioning at 100%, a little bravery here and a show of faith in the young man might well reap some rewards. We’ll see, I guess.
Meanwhile, various reports this morning suggest that Olivier Giroud has signed a contract extension which will keep him at the club until 2018. He’s out until the new year with the broken leg he suffered at Everton, but talks have been ongoing since last season and he’s apparently put pen to paper on a new deal.
I don’t really see any issue with this. He’s a decent player and the issue for me is that for too long he’s been the only striking option at the club, thus overplayed, overworked and with Walcott out last season, for example, there was too much weight on him to produce. He was still the top scorer in the last campaign with 22 goals, but now that we have Danny Welbeck we have that ability to keep things fresh up there once he comes back.
At the moment Welbeck is in exactly the same position as Giroud because he’s the only striking option worth talking about. We know that Arsene Wenger doesn’t believe Lukas Podolski can play there, and for all the talk of Joel Campbell being a genuine option, the scant minutes he’s played this season suggest he’s not convinced Wenger of his ability in general, least of all to the lead the attacking line.
When you look at what we’re going to need to do in January when the transfer window opens again, bar injury you’d have to say that a forward is very much the least of our worries. There are defensive gaps that have to be filled above all else, and considering we spent £30m+ on Alexis and £18m on Danny Welbeck, I can’t see us splashing out any more up top. There’s no official confirmation yet of the HFB deal, but it’s expected shortly.
We’ll get more from Arsene Wenger about the team news, and possibly that Giroud story, when he meets the press today ahead of the Galatasaray game tomorrow night. All the stories from that over on Arseblog News.
Finally, if you haven’t had a chance to listen to this week’s Arsecast Extra, check it out here. We look back on the Sp*rs game, try to make sense of the team selection, discuss the injury situation and answer loads of listener questions.
Right, that’s that for now, have a good one.
