I am thinking about our team and how even though we have seriously strengthened over the summer, we are still amid an injury crisis up front. Where our midfield and defense is better equipped to handle this kind of threadbare attack, we are going on the second season in a row where we have every single recognized striker (and half our wingers) in the treatment room.
I really don't like to criticize Arteta, because he's done an outstanding job turning the club and the team around, and have gotten them to the brink of major honors, but i feel that these crises that we have are 100% down to him and what he is asking of the players up front.
It is impossible for a player, game after game, to sprint forward to press the way we do, then sprint back to help defend, and then be available for the outlet and then sprint back forward to attack. It is not sustainable over a period of time. Our attacking players are proving this point. It wears you down and breaks you down to the point of injury, and short of having 3 (quality) players for each forward position, the only other option is for us to not expect players like Saka/Noni or GabMart/Eze/Tross or Vik/Kai continually sprinting back and forth and back and forth all game long.
There is a reason players like Salah were so effective, especially last season. He was not given the defensive responsibility that our players have, and he was their main attacking outlet, and he scored boatloads of easy goals because of it. We have players that should be able to cover the defensive responsibilities, such as Rice and Zubi (and even Rice was 100% gassed by the end of the game v Sunderland, and he has the best engine in the squad). Imagine what that kind of constant sprinting does to people.
2 seasons ago, we got extremely lucky with injuries and we went on a 16-1-1 run to end the season and just missed out on the title. Last season, we weren't so lucky and so far this season, it looks like we are unlucky with injuries again. Luckily we have the midfield and defensive depth to handle it better, but we cannot keep getting 6 or 7 injuries up front and keep being able to push for a title.
So the question is, where do we go from here? I know we are supposed to get a lot of players back (potentially) after the international break, but how long until these players break again? We've already been without Odegaard, Saka, Madueke, Kai, Martinelli, Vik and Jesus for large chunks (or all) of the season so far, and if they all come back healthy, it will be a huge boost. But will they all come back fully healthy and STAY that way? The way Arteta has us play, i am not so sure they will stay healthy. Arteta has players that can plug some of these gaps (Eze, Nwaneri, Merino, etc) but its not the same, and while we will still be able to win the majority of our games, we need our 'big boys' to be back.
I know i just went on a serious ramble, my head is so full of all these different facets of our team, and its hard to get them all linear and coherent sometimes. I just feel that we will continue to suffer these kinds of injuries because of the way he is setting the team up to play. The high press, the uber-defend, the bomb forward, over and over and over again, and it wears players down over time. Maybe if everyone comes back healthy, we'll be able to take Saka off at 65 or 70 minutes sometimes, or plug Kai in for Vik, or things like that. But that's a big 'if' it seems these days. But the answer cannot be "just buy more forwards", as that is also financially unsustainable.
I guess we will see after the international break who comes back and is ready to go for the incredibly important next month of the season. We play some very important games against Spuds, Bayern, Chelsea, Villa, even Brugge away (they just made Barca look like mugs) and if we are threadbare again, the slide will inevitably happen.
