Oh god how I hate these interminable international breaks. It feels like, for this season in particular, they were sent to try us Arsenal fans, as Saka limped off last night in England’s pointless 2-1 defeat to Greece. Honestly, I wish international football was just fired in to the sun.
I suppose it’s my own fault. I said yesterday that we’d paid our international dues already and therefore we were due a bit of a pass for injuries for this round of fixtures, so the footballing gods obviously took a look at what I committed to print and said “oh no you didn’t just say that…we’ll have you now”, striking again at our team and at our best player who is in blistering end product form right now.
And it’s yet another potential injury blow in a season that doesn’t even feel like it has properly started yet. Saka has – once again – proven just how integral he is to our team and is a player we rely on: we’ve essentially become a bit blasé about his availability but he’s a guy who gets kicked every week and seems to always get up. Maybe this was one game too many and now we sweat on his availability for our upcoming matches – Liverpool in particular looming on the horizon in a few weeks time.
Carsley only offered up that he ‘felt something’ and although I didn’t watch the game, I’ve seen the Greek goal in which Saka was on the pitch and hobbling. I’ve also seen some comments online that suggest that he seemed to be walking around a little more naturally after the game, so the hope is that it is just a knock, with Carsley also confirming that he ‘felt something’. But I think you and I can 100% agree that Saka should be on the first Uber back to his family home this morning. We cannot afford to risk him and England should absolutely take some responsibility for the players’ welfare and forget about testing him – just send him back to Arsenal to begin to recover. If I hear that England are keeping him around because it’s not as bad as first feared, well, I’m going to be pretty grumpy. So will a few million global Gooners too.
England’s next game is against Finland and it makes absolutely zero sense for him to play a single second of that game. Carsley should look to rotate his squad and he should be sending Saka home and letting Rice sit on the bench and watch from the side lines. On Saka you’d hope he’s ok and that happens, but on Rice you can absolutely bet that he will play another 90 minutes. That’s because these international managers rarely think about the players, they are all about getting results in pointless international matches that – in the grand scheme of things – mean very little at all. You can talk about the World Cup qualifying stuff, but at this stage it doesn’t really matter and there’s always another round of qualifiers for England to get through.
So all-in-all, this is a complete mess of a competition that should have never had existed and I just hope that Saka’s knock is not serious. If he’s out for any length of time then it’ll be another injury to add to the list, for which we could now be up to 13 players this season who have already missed at least one game for us. In terms of number of games and injuries/suspensions/absences, it’ll be 34 matches – you can see the details here for more information. To put some context in to this:
- Liverpool = 14 (not including their third ‘keeper in this like I haven’t included Setford)
- 115 Charges FC = 22
- Villa = 24 (there are a few names in there on top of that to bump those up, but the fact I’ve never heard of them suggest that it’s youth players, which I’ve obviously excluded)
- Chelsea = 29 (and they’ve got about a billion players on their list – I’ve excluded Ben Chilwell given that he’s not even a registered player for them I don’t think)
So you can see in that list that we have been severely hit this season, which makes the fact we are even within touching distance of the top a minor miracle, especially given our fixtures we’ve played, something I highlighted earlier this week. Our squad depth is certainly needed and it looks like it is going to be needed a little more when this international break is done for.
I talked yesterday about how we get 2022 Gabriel Jesus back, but I didn’t think it might be to play him in Saka’s position if he is injured as a result of last night’s match! If you’re looking at the good news it is that we have senior players who could fill that position like Gabriel Jesus, or Raheem Sterling, but as good and experienced as those players are, they aren’t our Starboy. Nobody in the world is.
Other than that there’s not really a lot else going on today. There’s the usual transfer click-baity nonsense you always see, but I’m not minded to spend any length of time on it, so instead I’m going to leave it there for today and get on with my Friday of work. You have yourselves a good one and I’ll catch you all in the morrow.
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