Arsenal team to line up against Liverpool, and the preparations for injuries
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From the Arsenal History Society:
By Tony Attwood
The fact that Arsenal played without Saliba for 95% of the game, so we add his name to Kai Havertz, Jesus, Saka, Norgard, White…. it is starting to look like a team sheet. And given the fact that Arsenal could hold Liverpool to just one goal with so much of the first team out (including Odegaard who was not fit enough to start), you might think that you have just found Arsenal’s problem. They have more injuries than anyone else, and indeed being able to hold the champions to just 1-0 with so many players missing, augers quite well for the future.
But now compare this thought with the headline from the Guardian today: “Arteta’s stale Starmer-ball is doomed to finish second to those who aim for glory” And what makes this article that follows even worse than the headline suggests it is going to be, is that it is under the headline “Analysis“
And so disgusted was I with this downturn in the style and approach of Guardian football reporting, I thought I would look at other uses of “Analysis” as a headline in that paper, just to show how out of step their football reporter is with the rest of the publication.
But what I found was that “Everyone in Canberra agrees action is needed on AI,” which is palpably untrue. And yet that too was under the headline word “Analysis”. If Mensa – the organisation that seeks the intelligentsia as its members, and which advertises in the Guardian, has noticed what is going on, it might wish to reconsider where it wishes to place its adverts.
The reality we see is that no club has more players out injured than Arsenal at the moment, and yet, despite that, the league table shows Arsenal third in the league.
Meanwhile, we might also note that Arsenal have the best defence in the league. And yes, I know we have only played three games, but consider just for a moment, last season. Arsenal conceded 34 goals in the league last season. The next lowest was Liverpool who let in 20 per cent more goals than Arsenal despite having far, far fewer injuries.
But such matters are irrelevant details to those writers who like to knock Arsenal for the sake of knocking Arsenal. For example, take the notion that Arsenal’s whole approach to football is stale, as the Guardian suggests.
Yes, last season Arsenal had only the third-highest goal-scoring achievement in the Premier League. But then remember that their top two goal scorers, Saka and Havertz, each only played 30 of the season’s league games because of injury, and you can start to see the problem. In 2024/25 the top four goal scorers got 47 between them. The season before that, the top four scorers got 62. Arsenal are being chopped to bits, and so the goals are not forthcoming.
That decline from 62 to 47 came about through injuries, and already this season, we are seeing the injuries pile up. Indeed, if you look at the injury table from EPL you’ll see, no club has more players out injured than Arsenal
In fact, Liverpool are shown as having one player injured to Arsenal’s seven, and one might therefore think that really, with such an overwhelming advantage on the injury front, Liverpool should have swamped Arsenal – and yet they only got one goal.
So what made the Guardian, its writer Barney Ronay, and its copy editor, when they feel that “Arteta’s stale Starmer-ball is doomed to finish second to those who aim for glory,” is appropriate for a club that yet again has more injuries than any other?
I can’t answer that apart from suggesting the instruction went out, “Forget reality. Knock Arsenal at all cost.” But it does seem to me that, “Why are Arsenal yet again top of the injury league?” would be more appropriate, or “Injury ravaged Arsenal hold Liverpool to one goal,” or “Where are Liverpool goals going to come from when they face a fit team?”
One can only take it that the notion of knocking Arsenal is of far greater importance to the Guardian than any semblance of reporting reality. And of course, we have to remember that this assault takes place in a media world in which journalists often copy each other. The Telegraph for example, has a headline including the phrase “Arsenal’s lack of ambition.”
Yet how can a club that had 35% more major injuries to its squad last year than any other team, and now finds itself top of the injury table yet again, have any ambition other than the find the cause of this problem and fix it?
Is it the training methodology that causes these injuries? Is it that opposition players deliberately tackle Arsenal players in a way that will cause long-term damage? Is it the way Arsenal play on the pitch? Or is it pure chance? Or do the refs allow oppositions to get away with worse tackles on Arsenal without any sendings off, than for other clubs?
I am always reluctant to consider “chance” since so little seems to happen in football by chance. If we believe in chance dominating football, there’s really not too much point in supporting one’s team since everything is in the lap of the gods.
I don’t have an answer I can prove as to why Arsenal have the top number of injuries yet again, but the agreement among journalists not to mention this factor really does give me cause for concern.
Why does the media refuse to mention the fact that Arsenall yet again are suffering more injuries than other clubs?.
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Arsenal team to line up against Liverpool, and the preparations for injuries
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