qs! wrote:
I'm completely convinced we are doing something wrong with our training and physio work. Having a bad year for injuries can happen, having Rosicky, Diaby, etc doesn't help. Then again RVP was injured for most of his Arsenal career but seems like a normal player since he left. Fabregas has had far less problems. The list goes on. We are doing something wrong.
van Persie has been injured a lot this season.
We actually had a very good season last year in terms of injuries. Then again it was the first one I can remember since the nineties. I think the explanation is simple enough, however. We play in a physical league without any winter break, we're participating in four competitions each year and we don't have the squad to do so. There might be smaller issues with Lewin and our general training setup; I don't have any insight in the matter so I'm not inclined to comment on it. But the essential point is that we lack a certain number of reliable players to call upon.
Bayern, by comparison, play 34 league games, have a winter break and only need to worry about one domestic cup. Barcelona play 38 league games, have a winter break and only need to worry about one domestic cup. Juventus and Inter play 38 league games, have a winter break and only need to worry about one domestic cup. Only English teams face this insane fixture congestion every year, and only those with the biggest squads remain standing when everything is said and done. This is where the real difference has always been made obvious when we've compared ourselves to the richer top four teams. United didn't win so much under Ferguson because they had the best eleven. They won because they had the biggest squad and just kept adding to it for two decades. They never started the same team twice in a row.
We're relying on too many factors to coincide, such as Ramsey not being injured, or Walcott not breaking down, or Mertesacker and Koscielny not being injured at the same time and never being out for more than a week or two at a time. Giroud's ineptitude meant that we never really had the attacking margins on our side this season, but people forget that we don't have any margins at all on our side when you look at the squad from an objective point of view. You could make a case for the attacking midfield perhaps but that's it. We could add a new striker in the summer but if he breaks down for a few months we're back against the wall next year. City, by contrast, still have Dzeko, Negredo and Jovetic to throw in if Agüero breaks a leg.
It takes years and several hundred million quid to add that kind of depth. We haven't added at all for the last six or seven years - we have detracted and then replaced for the medium to long term perspective. Last summer was the first one in a long while where we didn't have to do that, and we still only added two players (one starter) to what looked like a hopeless squad back in february 2013. This is why we should have let the reserves handle the domestic cups this season. Done away with them early on to avoid fixture congestion and the added physical strain. We needed to prioritise when we had such an excellent shot at the league. Wenger can't prioritise, unfortunately. It's his single biggest weakness as a manager.
