Morning folks and welcome to an Arsenal-less Saturday. But of course Arsenal being Arsenal and this season being what it is (cursed), of course the dust had barely settled before we learned of another injury setback.

If we all thought that seeing Martinelli get on the plane in the Dubai warm weather training trip was a good sign, we should have known better, because yesterday Ornstein dropped one of his unpleasant Ornbombs to state that Martinelli is facing around a month out with a hamstring injury, following going down in the first half against Newcastle.

Honestly, this season and the injuries can just f*ck the f*ck off. If true – and we have no reason to believe not because Ornstein doesn’t put stuff out there unless it’s basically true – then it’s yet another forward out and an already threadbare forward line is now down to the last few remaining players. Cue Arsenal social media channels having a general melancholy lament of our luck this season, or alternatively a rage session of why we didn’t act in January.

It is the most Arsenal thing though, isn’t it? I mean, we were LITERALLYTWO DAYS after the transfer window had shut, before losing another player for a period of time. Two days since we got the messages from some journos saying that Arsenal felt that the schedule is not so hectic, that they could get by with what we had, that the club were impressed by Jason Ayto’s thinking calm under pressure. I’m not going to go two-footed on a guy I don’t know or have any idea of his capabilities on Ayto, I’m just referencing it because I heard that Sami Mokbel from the Daily Fail state that Arsenal had been impressed with him during the transfer window period for not just rushing to sign any old body. The problem is, if we drop any more players then ‘any old body’ will actually be where we’d need to be at this rate.

Arsenal rolling the dice on player fitness this season feels like a gambling addict being handed the deeds to his house, wheeled in to a craps table and handed some dice, then walking away. It’s only gonna end badly. That’s what this season could feel like if this Dubai trip doesn’t have some kind of healing powers of Wolverine these next few days. Arsenal are – this season – Nordberg from the Naked Gun trilogy. If something were to go wrong, it’s going wrong.

The pictures of him in Dubai also mean another thing: You know how some of us got a little excited that Saka could be back soon? Well, based on the same logic that both he and Martinelli are heading out there, this news pours a little bit of ice cold water over the theory it could be ‘soon soon’, eh? I kind of said it yesterday and I personally don’t think we’ll see him until mid-March at the earliest anyway, but these Martinelli revelations from the last 24 hours show that there are players on the trip that won’t be training and are there for the team bonding side of things. That in itself is good; because it keeps the group closer together, it makes those injured players feel more part of the squad instead of sat at home wallowing in misery because they can’t play football, so I’m not particularly worried about that. It’s more that from a fan perspective you get some visual signs of positivity and then the reality sets in and you realise that you’re now reliant on the fitness of a 17-year-old, Havertz who has been flogged all season and Trossard. Those guys are now playing all the minutes, all of the time, until mid March, I suspect. That means Leicester away, West Ham at home, Forest away are all games in which we’re going to need them. The good news is that there is a 10 day gap between Newcastle away that we’ve just played and Leicester away. After that there is a seven day gap between Leicester away. But just four days later we play Forest and as things stands, the only rotation option we have is the rather uninspiring Raheem Sterling. If ever we needed a player to remember how good he used to be, it would be about now. It’s just a shame that Sterling’s super power – pace over small space – is basically gone.

The other issue here is that we are loading these players who are fit up with so many minutes that inevitably they will go down injured at some point. To be fair to Havertz he has – up until this point (and I’m touching wood as I say this. I literally am – it’s making it a little more difficult to type as well) – been a robust footballer. Trossard has been good in that respect too. But we’re relying on Ethan and at 17 that’s so much pressure to put on a kid. We saw what happened to him in January as he picked up a knock – his body is still adjusting to the rigours of elite football. So to now ask him to play the next four or five games feels like a big ask. He’s been great, he’s looked great, we’re all excited, but let’s all also acknowledge that he is still learning. He’s going to make mistakes. He’s going to have quite periods where he can’t impact games. Sometimes we’re going to need to mix it up. And our option when we need that?

Raheem. Sterling.

We’re now in the realms of praying that Sterling is going to come good somehow, when the eye test shows anything but if you’ve watched enough Arsenal this season. Arsenal gambled in the summer. They gambled in January. Both of those gambles have ended up being mistakes. I said on the day that the window closed earlier in the week “I hope Arsenal know what they are doing…” That statement still remains today, only now we are another attacking player down. We’re three attacking players down who, incidentally, three year’s ago were our starting front three.

There’s nothing we can do about it now though. We just have to get behind the lads and hope that this warm weather training session has the transformative effect – or even a percentage of it – that last season had.

Fingers crossed.

Back tomorrow.