Monday morning and we pick up the pieces from Saturday’s draw with Sp*rs. The main issue, of course, is the injury situation ahead of a busy week in Europe and the Premier League.
Mikel Arteta and Aaron Ramsey are both out for Galatasaray and Chelsea, while Jack Wilshere is a doubt after what looked to me, at least, a nasty ankle turn. Given his reaction straight after it happened, and the way his ankle folded, I was genuinely surprised he stayed on.
It’s not the first time he’s taken a blow to that ankle this season and when you remember it was that one which caused him to miss so much football then it’s a worry. Was it a weakness from the previous kick he got (I think it was against Dortmund) that caused the problem on Saturday? The fact that we’re shorn of two other first choice midfielders will make the decision making there a bit more difficult.
Arsene Wenger was flummoxed after the game in relation to Ramsey and Arteta, saying:
We have to really look at what happened. There’s no logic as it’s two players who were not involved in the week – no Arteta, not Ramsey – and they had quite a light week for them. We have to analyse what happened there. I don’t understand.
Even by our standards the injury situation so far this season has been little short of ludicrous. You can’t legislate for players getting a kick or being forced over a weak ankle with a challenge, for example, but to lose to players to muscle strains – especially when they’ve been rested in midweek – suggests something’s still not right behind the scenes.
I wonder if there’s anything in the new training methods introduced by Shad Forsythe that’s so radically different from the antiquated old way that it’s having an effect as the players adapt. It’s way too early to point fingers at the new man, in my opinion, but in almost every game this season we’ve suffered one injury or another. It’s happening too often and they have to find out why.
Is it the surface at the Emirates or at the training ground? The boots? Wisdom teeth? Hair restoring products? Who knows? But somebody has to go discover what it is and put an end to it before we pick up injuries to players we don’t have replacements for. You can’t go through a football season without aches and strains and injuries, it’s impossible, but what’s happening to us right now is surely not just down to bad luck.
In terms of numbers we’re not really at breaking point in midfield yet. Tomas Rosicky and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain will be looking for game time, while there’s even Francis Coquelin and (whisper) Abou Diaby too if that’s what it takes.
Suggestions that the manager might use the impressive Calum Chambers in midfield were more or less shot down by Wenger, who said:
I would consider playing Calum there, but I only have four defenders at the moment. I don’t know what I’ll do yet. Give me a bit of time, but Flamini is the only option I see at the moment.
Chambers was very impressive at right back on Saturday, I thought, and even though the manager has said he sees his long-term future as a defensive midfielder, that’s just not an option when you’re struggling for defenders the way we are. We need to be as solid as possible at the back with the games we’ve got coming up this week, and that means Chambers playing in defence.
Wenger was also critical of the fact we didn’t make enough of the 15 corners we had against Sp*rs, saying:
It’s a concern. We have lots of room for improvement and we need to do that quickly. If you go anywhere in the world and have 15 corners against you, you will concede because they should be so difficult to defend.
There’s really only one reason why our corners are so non-threatening and that is the quality of the delivery. Too often the ball is scuffed towards the near post – although I do like the variation we’ve added this season which sees the ball lumped as far over the opposite touchline as possible – or floated in which makes it easier for defenders and the keeper.
We have players who are decent in the air but when the ball is so bad it makes it almost impossible to score. While there are some players who are naturally better than others with set-pieces, most of it comes down to practice. David Beckham, for example, was renowned for practising his free-kick and corner delivery long after he was considered one of the best in the business.
We have fantastic technical players like Ozil, Alexis, Cazorla (who’s probably our best dead ball man) and even Oxlade-Chamberlain but they lack consistency in their delivery from corners in particular. Give Ozil or Cazorla a free kick from 40 yards and they’ll usually put a decent ball in, but from a corner it seems beyond us most of the time.
By my count we had 6 corners after Oxlade-Chamberlain’s equaliser on Saturday, including two in the last couple of minutes of injury time. None of them came close to getting us a winning goal so this is undoubtedly an area we can improve on. It’s hardly our biggest issue right now, but if we can do a bit better then it might just be the difference between one point and three a couple of times this season.
Right, that’s about that for now. All going well we’ll be recording a trans-Europe Arsecast Extra this morning. Keep your eye on Twitter @gunnerblog and @arseblog for the call for questions.
Until later.
