Going forward squad depth is going to be super important for football clubs. Raising the floor becomes as important, if not more important as finding opportunities to improve quality of our first team.

I hope we considered this in our acquisition of Berta.

    flobaba the problem is you’re adding more players. Each of whom wants more money. A few years ago a good player earned £100,000. Now it’s already £200,000. To support all these extra players and wages you either need to raise ticket prices or add more high value matches (like the extra 2 games in the champions league this year, and the club World Cup). More games means more stress.

    What we need is lower wages and fewer games. Otherwise vicious cycle will continue and the game will gobble itself up

        Claudius yeah, that horse has bolted already. Wages aren't going to be regulated (especially now with Saudis involved), and FIFA/uefa greed will only see more games added. The gobbling is already in progress.

          Claudius Arsenal: Saka, Gabriel, Havertz

          Those are serious tears which required surgery, I can't think of another club who has had three hamstring injuries so bad they required surgery in one season. I think Martinelli injured his hamstring this season and there might have been more.

            Burnwinter And preseason?

            Not sure about that part, just my interpretation of "with the aim to be ready for the start of next season."

              https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2025/04/02/arsenal-hamstring-injuries-gabriel-saka-premier-league/

              Some interesting data points in there:

              Data from Premier Injuries shows that, in the Premier League this season, there have been 118 hamstring-related injuries (they represent more than a quarter of all injuries in the division). Of those 118 injuries, 71 of them (60 per cent) have been severe enough to keep the player out of action for a month or more.

              From the start of the 2019-20 season to the end of the 2022-23 campaign, by contrast, only 40 per cent of hamstring injuries kept a player out for such a long period of time.

              Though, with this limited data, these aren't statistically significant results.

                Arteta has to take some of the blame. He's absolutely run the two CBs into the ground these past three seasons.

                He signed hybrid players like White and Calafiori - they should be capable to rotate into CB at times.

                We and he knows that Kiwior is dog shit.

                  Panda Yeah it was always coming for Saka, and Gabriel has played a lot and is always covering tons of ground, but Havertz getting run into the ground due to our forward crisis has been painful—this was looking like a big season for him. There's arguably been a domino effect caused by our underinvestment in forwards.

                    Seriously. Gabriel came back early from internationals because he has a suspension for the Argentina game. He was rested. It’s hard to say definitively what happened here

                    7 days later

                    Cala back in training apparently - hopefully get more clarity in Arteta’s presser tomorrow.

                    If we can keep this kid fit it massively increases our CL chances. Play him as LCB alongside Saliba and we are talking.

                    I feel Cala has one iconic moment left in him this season.

                    8 days later


                    If Jorg injury long term then think we will see much more of Zinny