Morning folks. Hope you’re all good.

Poor ol’ Tomi, eh? Takehiro is not on tour with the rest of the squad over the next week and a bit because of a knee problem that some of the Arsenal journo’s on the beat are saying relates to his knee. It means that he’ll have two-to-three weeks in which he won’t be training and at this stage of pre-season that’s a massive blow. If he picks up that knock two weeks ago then he’s probably going to be fine for the start of the season, but at this stage, if it’s two weeks in which he isn’t able to train, you’re looking at the week commencing 5th August in which he’s back into training. If we’re assuming that he’d need a minimum of a couple of weeks after that before he’s properly fighting fit, then you’re talking about the home game for Wolves that he could be named in the squad.

It was only on Friday that I talked about the impact of a pre-season that is truncated and how that last season impacted Gabriel Jesus, potentially for his whole campaign last year, so to get this news for Tomi doesn’t feel great. But we can’t say it is out of the blue. Look at this for an injury record. He’s 25 year’s old and every season for the last five season’s he’s missed at least ten games and at least 50 days absent for his club and national side. Unfortunately for him – and for us – I think we just have to accept that he is an injury prone player and that will never change. We’re going to be looking at an Abou Diaby-style guy by the time his contract expires in a couple of year’s and you can absolutely understand why the club only gave him an additional one year additional to his deal last season.

It’s a real shame because I’m sure you, like me, absolutely love him when he is playing and fit. He’s versatile, he’s strong, he’s good in the air, has good pace and is a duel monster when available. But that’s the biggest problem of all; he just isn’t always available. I’m sure you – like me – have looked at the Calafiori deal and wondered what the situation will be with all of the players in that left back position. But it feels like we’ve stockpiled in that position because we can’t seem to have one guy robust enough to play regularly. KT is the same and he was also confirmed out, but Zinchenko too is injured a lot, plus Tomiyasu as we’ve talked about above and although I thought Kiwior did a stand-up job filling in at left back during the run in last season, we all know it didn’t quite feel like a natural fit.

The Calafiori deal feels like it is Arteta looking to mitigate having to rely on Kiwior again for a big chunk of the season, but he’s also going to have to show that he can be robust enough for the physical demands of the Premier League. Looking at his injury record we are going to have to be very mindful of his availability. Last season he missed just two games, but at 22 year’s old he’s already missed over 150 games for the clubs he’s played for and the season before last it was 16 games, the season before that it was 20 games and the season before that it was 33 games. The hope is that his body has developed enough to be at a stage where he can stay fit like he did last season at Bologna, but I’ll remind you wonderful people of the path that Tomiyasu had trodden before he signed him from the same club:

  • 2020/21 season it was 10 games missed (he was 21)
  • 2019/20 season it was 12 games missed (he was 20)

Tomiyasu signed for us at a very similar age to Calafiori and I just have this worrying feeling that we might see the same from Calafiori. I hope not though.

One way of looking at it could be another body means the gap could be plugged, but we all know what happens in that situation; it isn’t a job share situation because usually those players all get injured at the same time.

And having our best players fit for most of the season has been a big reason as to how and why we’ve been able to compete at the top of the league for the last two seasons. It’s the reason why I hope – and expect – the current Arsenal transfer team to have done a heck of a lot of due diligence on him and that they know that if we are shelling out £42million of him, he’s going to be fit more than not.

Other than that all eyes start to look Stateside; and not because of Biden but because the team are up against Bournemouth on Wednesday night. It’s early hours of the morning UK time so I probably won’t bother watching, but it’ll be interesting to see how some of the young players get on and whether there are any of those young lads on tour who might have a bit of an impressive breakthrough. It would be nice to see somebody like Ethan Nwaneri get his chance and grasp it with both hands; we’ve all seen flashes of what looks like a very impressive player last season and I think a few are thinking that he might get more games like the League Cup and maybe early rounds of the FA Cup to see what he can do in the first team. The first team squad seem to be quite impressed by him and Arteta even joked that they were whispering behind him for the West Ham game to get him on when we were a few goals up. That whispering will only get louder if he can strut his stuff in the US over the next couple of weeks. We shall see what this kid can do.

Right, I’ll be off for today, as the wife has her grandmother’s funeral so I’ll be at that.

Catch you all tomorrow.