Hello everyone, it’s Saturday and I’m aching from a game of 5-a-side last night. I haven’t played for a few weeks so you know how that goes when you’re at the grizzled veteran stage of your football career. Anyway, just a quick one this morning as we catch up on the pretty much nothing that’s going on.
Think of all the injuries we’ve had as a club down the years. Some common ones, like hamstrings that get hamstrung, calves that are kept in small boxes and fed milk all day, groins, backs, ankles, knees and all that. There have been some unusual ones too.
Tomas Rosicky’s knee was one, where he had this very obvious problem but nobody knew what it was. Scans, x-rays etc, couldn’t find the problem. Apparently what had happened was his ligament had detached but sat down in exactly the place it should have been (just not attached), so when they did the tests everything looked normal. I can’t remember how they figured it out in the end, but it was something like a one in a hundred bazillion and fifty chance this would happen.
Then there was Thomas Vermaelen’s Achilles, which wasn’t so much his Achilles as a little bit of a thing near his Achilles and that took ages to figure out and ultimately he was never quite the same player again after such a lengthy spell on the sidelines.
Now, without even going down the road of the player who couldn’t play because his testicles had swollen to the point where he basically looked like a Space Hopper (NSFW GIF), we have another one in the shape of Santi Cazorla. The Spaniard has been out since October with what is ostensibly an Achilles problem too, but one that has been exacerbated by a dose of zombie foot.
I don’t say that to make light of it, but that’s pretty much what it is. In an interview with Onda Cero radio this week, Cazorla expanded on the problems he’s been going through, and boy oh boy does it sound rough. Speaking about another procedure he had to undergo this week, he said:
It was a little unusual what they had to do. They did a graft about a month and a half ago because the skin on my ankle was practically dead and had developed a wound that wouldn’t close, so they operated in Sweden. They had to do a graft, it was starting to feel better until I started to do a bit of cycling and other exercise and then the skin broke, opened and the stitches came out. So today they had to close the wound again.
And when asked about a time frame for his return, he said:
It’s hard to say because first I need the wound to close and if it doesn’t I can’t do anything. It’s hard because it all depends on the wound and when it closes and that’s got nothing to do do with me. Its the type of injury that depends on how it sets, in the end, it’s how the skin adapts to the graft they gave me using new skin taken from my arm. It’s been fine 90% of the time but that 10% is when it reopened which they closed today. I have to wait two weeks to see if it closes properly and hopefully I’ll be lucky enough that it heals so I can start to get back my lost muscle mass and ankle movement. Then we will see but it all depends on the skin and how it heals.
?
That’s got to be so rough for any player. A broken bone generally has a set time-frame. A pulled muscle. Even damaging ligaments etc, but this sounds pretty horrendous for him to be going through, and you’ve really got to feel for him. In the interview [you can read the full transcript here], he confirms that he does have another year at Arsenal, and the other day I asked you a simple yes or no about whether the club should have extended his contract. Here are the results:
I understand the desire for the club to be a bit more ruthless at times, but I also think that standing by a player who has been injured on duty and whose foot is practically necrotic is the right thing to do. If people want to constantly talk about Arsenal as a club that has a touch of class and does things the right way, getting rid of a player who is going through the mill like this really at odds with that.
So, let’s hope he can get back on track soon, and get back in action soon. It’s hard not to be worried about the impact it will have on him, and at 32 he’s definitely in the September of his career, but it’d be great to see him overcome this properly and back in the red and white.
Ok, not a lot else happening really. Because of the EFL Cup final it’s a weekend without Arsenal, which always makes things a little less interesting. There’s still this week’s phone-in Arsecast for you listen to below, and I’ll be back tomorrow with some Sunday guff and waffle. Until then, have a great day.
