Good morning, welcome to Friday and welcome to the beginning of another injury crisis (possibly).
With Laurent Koscielny back in the squad this week and Mathieu Debuchy just a quick tidy-up of his mohawk away from playing again, things were beginning to look up. However, after Mikel Arteta picking up a ‘quite serious’ calf strain against Dortmund and yesterday’s news about Jack Wilshere, we’re beginning to look a bit thin in the midfield area.
In case you missed it, Jack has had to have surgery on his ankle after the tackle from Paddy McNair did him some serious damage. He posted a picture of himself in the hospital with his stump leg right in the foreground and he’s going to be out of action for three months. As I said yesterday I have all the sympathy in the world for him – it doesn’t matter if he overcooked the chance, it’s no justification for the challenge or the injury that it inflicted.
As everything to do with everything is made into a joke these days, the Mirror ran a woeful piece of clickbait titled ’11 things stronger than Jack Wilshere’s ankles’ which has, marvellously, seen Wilshere respond on Twitter and Instagram. Posting a picture of the McNair challenge he said:
We all know the media like to talk nonsense, not all of them, but most! And most of it I can take…however after being shown an article in @DailyMirror saying I have ‘Worlds most Brittle ankles’. @bigrichinnes clearly doesn’t know what ‘brittle’ means. This picture clearly shows’ most people/players would have broken their ankle if someone tackled them like this. Luckily I have ‘loose joints’, not brittle’ and only damaged ligaments.
Shades of Thierry Henry challenging a journalist for writing something he didn’t like. Back in the day Henry would phone them up and ask them to explain themselves. Nowadays, we’ve got Twitter and I say good man to Jack for having a go. In fairness, he’s at something of a loose end in hospital waiting for Countdown or 15-to-1 to come on, but he’s right to try and change the focus of this.
It shouldn’t be about another injury for him, or about what happened before, it should be about what an unpunished, late tackle did to him, and how it means Arsenal are without his services until well into the new year. Remarkably there are people out there who still think our players being injured is some kind of ‘blessing in disguise’, but the stark reality we’ve got eight games between now and December 28th and, as we wait to hear how bad the Mikel Arteta injury is, our central midfield options are dwindling.
Mathieu Flamini and Aaron Ramsey are the two conventional choices, then we’ve got Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain who can play there, but doesn’t very often (perhaps a return for Theo Walcott would allow him to move backwards a bit). Santi Cazorla and Tomas Rosicky are much more comfortable at the number 10 or even wide and, well, that’s about it. I don’t suppose there’s much point mentioning Abou Diaby as he’s been sidelined for so long now it’s hard to imagine he’s even close to being ready.
Still, if people want to have a laugh about how brittle Wilshere is or how it won’t make any difference to us because his form hasn’t been consistent this season, go right ahead. I suspect these are the same people who will go mental when a Flamini red card and Ramsey’s groin twanging like a piece of old rope means we’re forced into recalling Francis Coquelin from Charlton. Then they’ll complain about the paucity of options.
Even if you don’t rate Wilshere or Arteta, or both, having them fit would allow us to maintain some amount of freshness in the squad over the Christmas period. At times there are just 48 hours between games and with them absent we’re going to have to dig very, very deep not to be affected by fatigue and injury. I just won’t ever understand how people can bemoan our injury problems in general then almost celebrate a player they don’t like getting hurt. I suppose it just comes down to the simple fact that some people are just dipshitted hypercunts.
Anyway, we’ll hear more from the manager this morning as he meets the press ahead of tomorrow’s trip to West Brom. Now though, it’s time for this week’s Arsecast.
On this week’s show I chat to Jim Campbell from The Football Ramble about the win and performance over Dortmund, the pressure on Arsene Wenger, his faith in Yaya Sanogo and that injury to Jack Wilshere. There’s a chance to win goodies from our friends at Savile Rogue, we hear from the Angriest Man on Twitter, and there’s all the usual waffle in there too.
You can subscribe to the Arsecast on iTunes by clicking here. Or if you want to subscribe directly to the feed URL you can do so too (this is a much better way to do it as you don’t experience the delays from iTunes).
To download this week’s Arsecast directly click here – 34mb MP3. The Arsecast is also available on our SoundCloud channel, as well as via the SoundCloud app for iPhone and Android. You can now also find it on the Stitcher podcasting app for iOS and Android. Or, you can listen without leaving this page by using the player below.
Download – iTunes – Stitcher
We will have all the news from the press conference over on Arseblog News this morning. All going well the Gent should be here this afternoon with his weekly round-up, more from me tomorrow.
