As we approach the busy holiday period the question arises as to why Arsenal has so many injured players after Santi Cazorla, Laurent Koscielny and run him till he drops Alexis Sanchez join the already long list of walking wounded following the Gunners bruising 1-1 draw against Norwich City at Carrow Road on Sunday.
Before the match Arsenal fans were already dealing with the fact that defensive midfielder Francis Coquelin would be out with a knee injury for three months, and to be honest who did not see this coming after Arsene Wenger refused to buy a back-up for the 24-year-old Frenchman even though Southampton’s Morgan Schneiderlin was available for £25 million.
Anyway moving on from that sore point the fact is that Arsenal continues to have more injuries than any other club with the latest three joining Danny Welbeck, Jack Wilshere, Kieran Gibbs, Tomas Rosicky, Theo Walcott, Mikel Arteta and Francis Coquelin on the disabled list.
Over the past ten years Arsenal has led the Premier League in injuries which leads us to believe that something is either wrong with the way Wenger trains the players or the fact he does not give his core of first team players enough rest between matches.
Fitness expert Raymond Verheijen claims it is Wenger’s habit of short-term rigorous training over the summer, similar to the way the Army trains new recruits at Boot Camp rather than a slow build up to match fitness before the season starts as to the reason Arsenal seems to suffer so many injuries to players during November and December.
Others however could put it down to the fact that the club has more midweek matches to contend with; with us here at Soccer Transfers seeing the reason being the fact Wenger constantly plays the same XI players when they are fit to play.
All you have to do is get a list of players that are available for Wenger to choose from and you can pick his starting XI with ease, as you know he is going to pick if available the same players who played a week earlier if they are not injured.
In other words Wenger has a core of players that do not get enough rest between matches which leads to more injuries, and while this is not rocket science how can a manager with the experience of the Gunners boss and the team around him not see this?
There is another theory doing the rounds, and while it seems to us made up to suit the circumstances it does make a case as to why Arsenal is such an injury prone team.
Enter the Gulliver Theory of muscular injuries, a belief based on the theory that players with short legs have an increase in lateral movement when it comes to playing an intricate short-passing geometrical game that is often referred to trying to walk the ball into the net.
On average Arsenal’s midfielders are 4cm shorter than the rest of the league and must constantly compete with bigger and more powerful opponents on the field of play leaving the Lilliputian Gunners to work harder, hence more injuries.
We of course think this is a crock of s**t, but when you consider that the long-legged Olivier Giroud and Per Mertesacker spend less time out it does make you wonder if there is not something we are missing.
