Morning all. Injuries have long been a topic of discussion among Arsenal fans, and so it was interesting that this week it was reported that the club’s head doctor, Zafar Iqbal, was to leave. David Ornstein reports now that he will be replaced by Portuguese Arnaldo Abrantes, who has just left his role as Head of Medical Services at Aston Villa. He also has history with Nottingham Forest and Estoril. If you ask Arsenal fans whether we’re a team that’s injury prone or not, I think the answer would lean towards yes. Last season we missed Kai Havertz for half the season, Bukayo Saka had problems, Gabriel had a big hammy twang (technical jargon, sorry), Martin Odegaard suffered a series of injuries which punctuated and disrupted his season, Ben White and Mikel Merino picked up serious problems at distinct stages, and Jurrien Timber’s groin problem ruled him out from March until the Champions League final but his participation in that appears to have exacerbated the problem and ruled him out of the world cup. At the same time, Declan Rice, Viktor Gyokeres, Martin Zubimendi, Eberechi Eze, Gabriel, Leandro Trossard, Gabriel Martinelli, David Raya and William Saliba made over 50 appearances in the 63 games we played in all competitions, and Saka played 49 times despite a sense he missed more of the season than that. Appearances aren’t the same as minutes, obviously, so Rice’s 55 appearances and 4,456 outfield minutes are very different physically from Martinelli’s 53 appearances and 2,384 minutes. The reality is that injuries are so multi-faceted that the idea there’s a simple solution just doesn’t make sense. Some players are just more robust than others. As much as I love Riccardo Calafiori, he’s fundamentally a bit more brittle than a Rice or a Zubimendi. The injuries to Merino and White were not about being injury prone, they were just the unfortunate consequence of the physical aspect of the game. Yes, Ben White has had some issues in the last 18 months, but he just got a bit unlucky in a challenge, as did Merino whose foot was stood on causing that complicated break. Havertz had barely had an injury in his career until he picked up a hamstring strain days after Mikel Arteta called him a ‘genetic powerhouse‘. Was the knee injury he then sustained on the opening day of last season against Man Utd linked to that, or something distinct? As fans, we’re dealing with very surface level information, because we know it’s something the manager likes to keep under wraps as much as possible. How much does the man in charge play a part in fitness issues? We often think of a manager as someone who wants the very best for all his players at all times, which is probably true at the heart of it, but it might also be at odds with the job he has to do. I’m sure he does want his injured players to recover properly, but at the same time he has to win football matches. I don’t think it’s unique to Mikel Arteta, but are players pushed into action ahead of the optimal return time? Are the demands too high? Could training be less intense? Legitimate questions that supporters generally lack the information to answer properly. A few years ago Arteta spoke about how the best players in the world have to be able to play every three days at a high level. We worried about the demands being placed on Saka, in particular, and then his hamstring went. We looked at Havertz at the end of that game against Wolves and how shattered he was, then his hamstring went and like Saka he needed surgery, not just rest. How much does training play a part? How much does the schedule, domestic and international, take its toll? The minutes I mentioned for Declan Rice above don’t take into account the games he also played for England last season. Last summer was, to me anyway, an acknowledgement that you have to widen your talent pool, because you can’t keep relying on a small core group if you want to go the distance. We tried that, fell short. This time the return for a deeper squad was the Premier League title and a Champions League final. This summer should be about augmenting that with players who can play more minutes and ease the burden from those who played the most. For example, a midfielder who can allow us to take some of the weight off Rice and Zubimendi in the way that Christian Norgaard was not deemed suitable to do. Almost everywhere else you see duplication: Trossard/Martinelli – Havertz/Gyokeres – Saka/Madueke – Eze/Odegaard – Calafiori/Hincapie – White/Timber (although as I mentioned yesterday we have to give some thought to that). There might be some changes to those, and at the back I understand why, when you have a pairing like Gabriel and Saliba, it’s hard to change, but this is how it has to work now. It’s not just the schedule, it’s the demands of the modern game and how its played. It’s faster, it’s more intense, it takes more out of players physically than it did in the past, and there’s no escaping that reality, so you have to build in the redundancy in terms of your squad and the talent it contains. Maybe a new doctor will help a bit, who knows, but if we have fewer injuries next season it’s more likely to be because we’ve managed our big squad well, and had a bit of luck along the way – especially after a World Cup summer when players have scant rest before returning to action for their clubs. Speaking of which, Thomas Tuchel spoke about Bukayo Saka, and it’s clear he’s still dealing with that Achilles injury which impacted him towards the end of the season: Bukayo is still getting there, playing through discomfort at the end of the season, but obviously managing it and playing at a high level, but still not at 100 per cent. He is at the moment not able to do every training session through the week and then play. He is still going to be managed. The player and his needs and health are always first. England are nursing him through training sessions, and we’ll ultimately see how it affects him and his performances, but as we saw when he was in the red and white, the Saka of this season was never consistently at the level we know he can reach. If we’re being honest, the likelihood is that the best solution to his problem is rest, but England need him and Arsenal need him, and that’s the dilemma. No new doctor is going to come along and provide a magic fix for Saka when what he probably needs is a couple of months off. But will he get that? Can he get that? I think we probably know the answer. There is likely a long-term solution but football is a short-term business, and that influences things more often than not. Anyway, we’ll see how it all goes next season, but with this group of players and the circumstances of the upcoming season, this new doctor is gonna have a busy start to his Arsenal career. Right, I’ll leave it there for now. Till tomorrow. 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