This season has absolutely battered Arsenal with injuries from day one, so perhaps it is no surprise that I’ve woken up this morning to jot down some thoughts, only to find that Leandro Trossard limped off after 37 minutes in Belgium’s 1-0 defeat to Israel in Budapest yesterday. I haven’t read any comments that talk in any great length about the strength of the injury, with Dominico Tedesco only admitting that he had to come off with an injury on 37 minutes.

If he’s coming off on 37 minutes then it doesn’t sound like a ‘he felt something so we took a precaution’-type move. We’ll have to wait and see what Arteta says towards the end of this week, but I’d be surprised if he’s available for Forest now, so when you add that to the news that Ben White is going to be out for at least six weeks. This is another international break that has proved costly for us. Yes, I know White doesn’t go away with England, but it has still come during this period.

And it really seems like we can’t catch a break this season. As soon as one player returns, it seems another one goes down. Arteta even referenced how brutal the injury setbacks have been pre the international break, so I bet he’ll not be thinking his luck is changing with this latest round of news, that’s for sure.

So by my reckoning – and using the Premier League in isolation via TransferMarkt – we’ve now missed a total number of 51 absences across 11 games this season. An ‘absence’ is counted as one player, missing one game, of which I’ve counted those who are listed as first teamers for Arsenal. I’ve got KT in there although clearly he is not in the plans, but he is part of the 25-man squad for this season.

Let’s let that sink in for a second, because if you work that out as an average, it is that Arsenal have missed just under five first team players for every single game this season on average. To put that in context, Liverpool have had 30 absences and City – who I have seen a lot of news about in the press and their injuries right now, have had 41 absences – that’s a player less on average this season.

And this data only shows what has happened. If we have bad news on Saka and Rice, then this weekend could be White, Calafiori, Tomiyasu, Rice, Saka, Trossard – all could realistically be out this weekend coming.

It is bitterly disappointing at a time in which we are just looking to crack on and get our season started. We’ve all been frustrated with the form, it has been annoying to have to keep fielding mix and match sides, but unless we get some good news on the immediate horizon (and so far this season we’ve hardly had that, eh?) then we’ve still got more time to wait before we can start to see this Arsenal team feel a little more whole again. Arteta, to his credit, has tried his best to avoid being over melancholy about it and has regularly talked up the fact it is not an excuse and the team just needs to get on with it. He’s sought to find solutions with these problems like playing Timber in at left back, Partey at right back, as well as having Trossard and Havertz job swap as the roaming left eight/false nine, but it is no real substitute for having players like Calafiori playing in at left back, Partey in at six (which he has been very good at this season), as well as Odegaard in at right eight. But that can only get you so far and I think Arteta was probably looking at the return of Odegaard as the opportunity to start getting the more regularly recognised XI back together and playing regularly to see if we can go on a run.

If you’re going to go glass half full you might say that Trossard’s form has been such that he probably wouldn’t start anyway against Forest, but any injury that may be confirmed by Arteta this week does rob us of options. We have Gabriel Jesus and Sterling who can play in those positions and perhaps they might see this an opportunity for them to get more minutes and be that first name to be called from the bench, but we haven’t exactly seen inspirational cameos from them so far, have we?

The good news is that we now have until the new year before we have to deal with another round of these horrendous international matches and I for one couldn’t be happier about that. Get in the effing sea, international football.

There doesn’t appear to be any other noises of players going down so hopefully that is a good sign, but I suspect Arteta is definitely looking at his options at the moment and wondering what jiggery-pokery he’s going to have to deal with this weekend when every player returns from international duty. Brazil play in the early hours of the morning tonight against Uruguay at home, so Gabriel Martinelli and Big Gabby won’t be back until Thursday at the earliest, so we still have to cross everything that something doesn’t happy to one of them. I really pray we’re ok on that front but given the luck we’ve had so far this season nothing would surprise me less than to see one of those guys break down. Hold on to whatever lucky charm you’ve got folks.

That’ll do me for today I think. Back tomorrow to see if we’ve lost anyone else from the squad to injury.