Why can't we have nice things?

We're an injury to Gabriel from me not watching us as we sink to the Championship.

You gotta be kidding me.

What in the actual fuck? He was the only hope i had of steadying the middle of the pitch. Nightmarish stuff

This is impossible to comprehend.

I was worried as soon as I read the vagueness of the injury. It sounds like it's one of those where he could probably play through it but we don't want to risk it until it's fully healed. Just inject him with whatever Atletico injected him with and get him back.

Bell reckons Partey may be a surprise return to the squad for the Spurs match if he passes a fitness test on Saturday. Arsenal have only said that he's continuing rehab ahead of a return to full training, which I thought sounded more upbeat.

Hope we're not risking him if thats true.

Indeed, we’re going to get trounced anyhow so I’d rather we saved him till he was fully fit and ready to go again.

Arteta confirms he’ll be back in training tomorrow. Good news whether he plays Sunday or not, thought he was out long term.

Nice. Players are slowly coming back. One of the best things about the match yesterday for me was seeing Mari sudddenly start and Chambers coming on. I hadn't seen the line-up or the bench and didn't even know that any of them were close to being fit.

flobaba wrote:

Indeed, we’re going to get trounced anyhow so I’d rather we saved him till he was fully fit and ready to go again.

Pshh.

This kind of mismanagement is annoying, possibly even worse than tactical or technical naivete.

This guy is basically your key to the season going successfully.

And you choose sacrifice him for the one game in the next four you were almost certain to lose.

Now he’ll be coming back just in time to get injured again against Man City/ Chelsea.

Top marks.

Rumours that Thomas Parety is out for 2 months. I hope it’s BS.

15 days later

Any news on Martinelli?

Arteta said it was just a swelling on the shin yesterday. Painful, but nothing broken etc, so he shouldn't be out in the long long:

Our Brazilian forward was hurt following a collision with Zach Steffen and forced to leave the pitch through injury just two minutes into the second half.

And Mikel Arteta was able to provide an update on Martinelli in his post-match press conference.

"It was just a really bad kick on his shin and it was swelling up and he could not continue," our manager said.

"[At half-time] he was pushing, he was saying he was completely fine, that he wanted to carry on. He had a scar that wasn't open and he wanted to try, so we gave him the opportunity to try and when he was on the pitch he was uncomfortable so it was an easy decision to take him off.

Probably got a hematoma judging from the pics, but maybe they rolled it out in the dressing room.

Hes fine. Will be in the squad v Chelsea.

Phew. Thank god.

About the only player we have that's capable of creating something positive at the moment. Bar Saka.

5 days later

[Twitter]

Hopefully, we see him in Mid January. Can you imagine most of Partey, Tierney, Gabriel, Leno, Martinelli and Saka together on a field?

Claudius wrote:

Can you imagine most of Partey, Tierney, Gabriel, Leno, Martinelli and Saka together on a field?

I'd hope so, we fielded most of them against Chelsea. 😉

Gotta have Partey. The midfield is a dead zone.

11 days later

How is Martinelli’s injury? He could be Diaby 2.0 :-(

Any good feeling from the result is dampened by the feedback from Arteta, saying 'its not looking good'. Let's see. A bunch of physiotherapy specialists on twitter said it looked mild. Having him back brought a sense of excitement to this campaign like nothing else has for me. Would marginally lose interest if he's out for a while.

It didn't look that bad to me. It looked like a sprain. Extremely painful in the moment, but hopefully not much to worry about long term. I really hope that's the case anyway.

Cedric The Entertainer did it as well. Except worse. Shrugged his shoulders and got on with things

I’m less confident about the Martinelli injury this morning.

On his insta stories he has reposted loads of players wishing him as well as if it was a long term injury.

Also this:

I hope I’m wrong.

In any case I'm happier now that Arteta has confirmed that it's an ankle problem rather than a recurrence of his knee. Hopefully it's short term.

5 days later

Main output for a successful season for Holding, Bellerin and Tierney is that they are fit and available for selection for the most part. If they fall short I would develop a gradual replacement plan. There is just no room for that kind of disruption for a club and squad trying to finds its way again.

Especially with Tierney, I hope this isn't going to be the defining part of his time here because his big potential is there.

Bad news for Mari as he will be out for "the next few matches" acorrding to Arteta. We have Gabriel back so we can cope but shame for him as he was playing very well.

We need to be more careful with Tierney, this is a warning Arteta needs to take seriously.

Such bad luck for Mari, he may help have kept Gabriel out of the team. At least he proved himself to an extent.

Help Gabriel out of the team?
You don't like Gabi?

Oops, the help wasn't supposed to be there. I actually would have but Gabriel back in anyway, but I wouldn't have been outraged otherwise.

Yeah. Left side of defense has been sorted out rather quickly. Now on to the right.

Personally, I'm excited to have Gabriel back in the team. I liked what Mari provided, but I thought Gabi was playing at a higher level earlier this year.

24 days later

Orny says Tierney should be back soon, the reckon the discomfort is most likely just fatigue. Wheatley says Partey was taken off as a precaution too and should be back soon.

i'm a bit worried about thomas tbh. i've seen enough to know he can give any midfield in this league hell when he's physically up to it, but seems to wane around the 60-70 minute. perhaps he was able to dominate in spain with his stamina, but in order for him to dominate in the epl there's simply more sprints and physicality required, and even someone as physically gifted as him takes time to adapt.

Hopefully he's just behind physically because we hasn't had a chance to adapt yet. We bought him in the dying seconds of the transfer window which was a bit stupid; if he'd come over earlier he would have had at least some preseason to prepare him for life in Premier League. And then he got injured almost immediately and has been in and out of the team since then. Not a lot of opportunities to work on upping his fitness when he needs to put in work just to compensate for what he's losing by not playing.