On the Arsenal History Society website we are celebrating Arsenal’s 100 consecutive seasons in the top divison.  The latest episode is Arsenal 2001/2: the problem of scoring, and after three second places, Arsenal come top – and that article links to a complete index of the entire series, tracing the club’s 100 season run back to 1919/20.

—————-

By Tony Attwood

Looking through the newspaper headlines this morning (16 June), I was struck by just how many dispiriting and negative headlines there could be on one day in relation to the World Cup.

“A Qatar private jet, police escorts and two games a day: Infantino’s World Cup”

“Iran fans defy Fifa ban to protest at World Cup match”

“Critics call out the juxtaposition of Fifa president jetting from match to match as supporters struggle with exorbitant prices.”

“Tuchel has ripped up Southgate’s England with jeopardy, hierarchies and no filter”

“World Cup’s ludicrous ‘quarters’ are disfiguring football”

“Bukayo Saka: I am gambling on my fitness at this World Cup”

And that is just the start, and we haven’t even got to “Players’ match boots were stolen from a van before their first training session in Kansas City”

Of course, there is also some that is trying to give us a bit of a laugh along the way such as “Duck, duck, goal: bird dressed in Mexico’s World Cup jersey scores on social media,” but really we come back to earth pretty quickly with “Saka says he is gambling on fitness but ‘ready to go’ for England’s date with Croatia”

And this really isn’t the news that I want to read – or I suspect in relation to Saka the news that Arsenal officials want to see either.

The essence of the piece is that although Saka came on as a substitute against Costa Rica, there are still a lot of doubts about his fitness.   Worse, the problem seems to go back to the League Cup final against Manchester City in March, and there have always been suspicions that clubs that fancied their chances at winning one of the cups or the league would go to any lengths to hurt one or two Arsenal key players, although I stress no direct evidence of that sort of event was reported in this case.  

But it is noticeable that since that game, Saka has found it hard to play a full 90-minute match – in fact he has only completed the full 90 minutes five times, and was substituted at the end of the 90 minutes in the Champions League final.  Clearly, what he really needs is a prolonged period of rest, but what he is getting instead is a trip to America, regular training and the possibility of playing the World Cup matches.

In his statements, Saka has been full of praise for Mikel Arteta and the medical team at Arsenal, and has gone out of his way to say how much they have been helping him.  He has been somewhat quieter concerning the England medical team and has also talked about playing through the “pain barrier.”  “gambling” by paying even “if you’re not feeling your sharpest.”  

It was also rather alarming to hear him say in an interview, “At the end of the day, people don’t really care how you’re feeling, they expect you to deliver, they expect you to perform. I’m happy to take the gamble.”  It’s those last six words that worry me.

The question, therefore, for Arsenal is whether the team have a backup approach to attack for league and cup matches which can be utilised in games when Saka can’t play?   England, incidentally, play Croatia tomorrow.

Noni Madueke, Declan Rice and Eberechi Eze are also at risk of injury.  But the problem is that Saka has been talking about how winning the league has given the players “more confidence and freedom” and how such a triumph “gives you more belief.”

That of course, may well be true, but confidence and freedom can equally lead a player into performances on the pitch which are not appropriate for the level of fitness.  That in turn can lead to disaster, and of course, if that happens, although England will miss Saka for a few games in the World Cup, it is Arsenal who will truly suffer.   

The World Cup semi-finals are played on July 14 and 15 with the third place play off and the final, played on July 18/19.  The new season starts on the weekend of the 22nd and 23rd of August.   

So if England make it to the last four, Saka then gets his three weeks compulsory lay off before he starts training again which means he won’t be ready for the weekend of 22/23 August.   In fact we could be missing quite a few players.