The last few words I said on my blog post from yesterday:

As Arteta said in the wake of the Chelsea game, it’s been eight weeks of consistent players going down with niggles, so we need to just get through this final international window and then get some flipping players back!

Famous last words, eh?

And as if the Footballing Gods themselves were having a read and sniggering to themselves as to how they could land a couple of eggs square on my Chevy Chase, up pops another injury issue for us, this time in the shape of Ben White. He’s undergone what the media have reported as a ‘minor’ surgical procedure to help cure a problem with his knee and what’s being reported is that he’ll be out from between six to eight weeks. Six week’s takes him to Christmas and that’s when it starts to get busy, but as we know having just seen Martin out for a couple of months, you don’t just walk back in to the team. You have to build up your fitness.

I suppose you could say that a few of us saw it coming, because he’s been in and out of the team and Arteta himself has spoken about how White would run through brick walls and never tells you when he’s injured, so him being in and out of the team and also playing within himself a bit, suggests to me he’s been carrying this for a while. It clearly got so bad that the club thought they couldn’t just play him until he broke and have taken this step now given it’s the international break. That knocks off one of the six-to-eight and so I guess that’s something, but it means during this period of the season we are going to rely on the likes of Timber to stay fit. The hope is also that Calafiori is back after the international break, but as I’ve previously said on here, I have worries about him and his injury record. He’s a fantastic player, he improves us immensely when on the field, but we’ve played just over a quarter of the season and he’s already missed games over two spells with two injuries.

Then there’s Tomiyasu, who has played a total of six minutes at the end of the Southampton game. He’s the forgotten man it seems and I can’t even remember the last time Arteta even spoke about him. I think we have to rule him out as any kind of reliable full back option and to me it means either that Arteta is going to lean in to Lewis-Skelly a bit more than he thought, or he’s going to have to bring Zinchenko back in to the fold a little more.

On the right side we’ll need to be crossing everything to hope that Timber remains fit, because the Thomas Partey at right back experiment is ok in small doses, but I don’t think many of us want it to be a more regular occurrence. His form this season – particularly when playing in midfield – has been great and we need to be seeing him there, not rucking in to fill because we have another defender injured.

And White’s injury does feel like this season is setting up to be a cursed one in terms of trying to reach our objectives of winning the Premier League. I think it was James from Gunnerblog who said on an Arsecast that he felt like this season ‘feels’ like one in which we’re not going to win the league; dodgy red cards against us, injuries, certain players out of form, etc – it does feel like we are having everything go against us. And to win the Premier League in the era of 115 Charges FC, you have to have a bit of luck in all departments: injuries, suspensions, form of players, but also catching teams at the right time. For example, playing a side who is beset with injuries, or a side like Man United under Ten Haag, who were rudderless but now are stringing together wins and they will have an Amorim ‘new manager bounce’ just in time to play us, whereas Liverpool played them earlier in the season and they were terrible. I’m not trying to make this about Liverpool by the way, I’m just using it as the example. Last season I think there were a few games where things went our way in matches, where we played teams decimated with injuries, etc, but this season it just feels like the rub of the green isn’t happening for us.

This Ben White injury is a perfect example of that. I just hope…nay…PRAY…that we can get the core of first teamers available for the run up to this Christmas period. That starts with hoping that Rice and Saka are not too serious. I saw Harry Kane calling out players withdrawing from international duty, but if he’s looking in Rice and Saka’s direction, I’d point him to the fact that neither players could finish the game against Chelsea. And those are two players that Arteta ALWAYS plays the whole game in. They don’t come off. So for both of them to be sat down towards the closing stages of that game, shows that they aren’t quite right. Harry Kane and his ENG-GER-LAND mentality can ‘do one’, as far as I am concerned.

Right, I’m going to leave it there for today I think. Off for an early one in the office and a bit of an office anniversary party later. You make sure you have a good one and I’ll be back tomorrow to see what else is cooking in the world of football.

Laters peeps.