goon I'd argue any long term injury to integral first team players will be a massive hit. If you consider Saliba integral to our title challenge, then it stands to reason that it's a big blow to lose him for a 1/3 of it. Add another injury to the same area of the pitch and you've got big problems.
It's more about White being the preferred alternate for both Saliba and Tomiyasu. If either of Cedric or Holding is a better player—or if they are one better player who can play both RCB and RB in Arteta's system, it's then a much better outlook.
I checked and last season we dropped 1.36 PPG after both Saliba and Tomiyasu were injured, and 0.51 PPG before we got to that point. That's huge. Team stability, morale and defensive errors all big impacts as we just missed out on a first Premier League trophy since the Invincibles.
As @RocktheCasbah points out it can be harsh to label players "injury prone". The flip side being that "durable" players also get injured. The sting goes out of these disputes if you just run the models based on players' historical availability and notice that a few players tending to be injured hits hard.
Adaptation to Timber's injury already cost us 2 points versus Fulham, 5–10 total by season's end looks about right if we take no further action. It's not a crisis, but I can't agree with blasé installation of false pragmatic limits about what you can and can't do with the squad. We should have covered Timber given our spending elsewhere, and not doing so looks like a big risk.
