Just when I was starting to really enjoy this World Cup and international football, a timely reminder was dealt to me this morning as I scrolled through my Twitter timeline and read the news about Gabriel Jesus’ injury:

Three months out instead of three weeks, as he’ll probably need surgery.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: F*ck international football.

This is a problem for Arsenal now and it basically means our talismanic striker who has fundamentally changed the way we have played this season, will now miss nearly a third of the season. And with the season being compacted from Boxing Day onwards, he’ll miss a ton of really important games.

Honestly, how unlucky can he – and we – get, eh? He barely featured, got a shot in one match and probably wouldn’t have started in the group stages, yet he’s come down with a really unlucky injury and it has Arsenal fans in a bit of a tizz because we’re now wondering how this might impact our season.

Of course it’ll impact our season, in a big way too, because the way Gabriel has led our press in attack has had a massive impact on how we have managed to be successful. We are a better team than the side last season, but let’s not forget the impact of not having a player with that energy has. We’ve all talked about the difference between Lacazette and Gabriel Jesus and it is night and day. Now, if you’re looking at the glass being half full instead of empty, you could look at the impact Eddie Nketiah had when we finally binned that bum Lacazette and gave him the keys to the car; he scored a few goals for us and we did look a better side. But Eddie is a guy who wants to get in the box, he isn’t a guy who will take up the same positions as Gabriel Jesus and that is a worry.

Perhaps he can contribute more by being that focal point and getting more goals, but it will mean other players need to step up and it might mean they have to cover those deeper lying positions where Gabby J would normally pick up the ball. The good news is that we’ve had other players stepping up on the goal front; Xhaka, Odegaard, Saka and Martinelli all showed that as Gabriel Jesus went through his dry patch from a goalscoring perspective. So now what Eddie needs to bring is that goal threat and end product, whilst others are more involved in the build up.

What we all also have to hope is that we don’t pick up any more injuries in attack and the injury to Gabriel Jesus does mean that we look quite thin on the ground in the forward positions. Thankfully we have ESR back in December and he’ll provide competition in the wide forward positions, but Arsenal will surely step up their efforts to get somebody in during January you would have thought. As it stands if we lose Gabriel Jesus for three months, you can basically call it four months as he gets back to full fitness, which means we won’t see him back to full speed until March time. That means we probably have to play around 13 – 15 games without him and as opposed to before this World Cup when we could rotate for the lesser competitions and the Europa League games, just looking at some of the matches we have, there won’t be much room for rotation I suspect for Nketiah. Just look at Christmas alone; West Ham at home, Brighton away, Newcastle at home. Where are we rotating the striker positions there and whowould be the option? We don’t really have one, unless you’re going to play Martinelli there, but he’ll be playing as a wide forward anyway, so it isn’t like we could bring in a player to rest Nketiah.

Sorry, I know I’m doomongering a little this morning, but it really has taking a gloss off of a great World Cup that i’ve enjoyed so much. Thomas Partey coming home and seemingly being fit is useful, Arsenal players not playing loads of matches and therefore supposedly reducing the risk of injury and fatigue has been useful, yet here I sit this morning with one of our most important players now banjaxed for a big chunk of our season. It sucks.

And as a result of this I kind of just want to get as many Arsenal players back home and training as soon as possible. I won’t go as far as saying I want England out to protect Saka, as I don’t want that, but I do want to see our players rested and ready to go over Christmas and if that means some get knocked out soon, then great. I’m even at the point where not seeing Saka start tonight won’t have me saying “why?!?” but instead, “good. Keep him rested”.

Fingers crossed for Gabby and as a guy who has clearly just loved playing as much football as he has, let’s wish him a speedy recovery. Come back soon man, we will need ya.

As for the World Cup, there are some matches played today – France versus Poland and England versus Senegal. But I’m not really minded to talk too much about them today. Hopefully England win, I’ll watch it tonight, but that curse of Arsenal players getting injured on international duty has been re-ignited (remember Rosicky used to always get it? Or Vermaelen?) after a few years when we’ve been ok and that has me grumpy this morning.

Catch you all tomorrow. Sure I’ll have gotten over my ‘I hate internationals’ rage by then.