By Bulldog Drummond
It seems almost years ago that we had the ceaseless, continuous wild ravings of those who took their lead from the frankly deranged Stewart Robson who ceaselessly claimed that all Arsenal injuries were caused by Arsene Wenger’s training methods.
Yet there are still aspects of the media that will give him time and space – such as TalkSport – but anyone even remotely in touch with reality will have known throughout that Arsenal did not have the worst injury record of any club, but did particularly suffer from a lack of protection from referees.
Quite how and why that happened we have explored in great detail with fulsome analytics, and of course the media who are committed to protecting the image of PGMO will have none of it. But throughout our analyses of comparative injury figures the fact has remained Arsenal don’t have the worst injury figures, but they have often been singularly targeted with those targeting them abetted by compliant PGMO employees.
Here is the current list of injuries in the Premier League courtesy of physioroom
| # | TEAM | How many down? | Last man to fall | What happened? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Crystal Palace | 10 | C Wickham | Groin Strain |
| 2 | West Ham United | 8 | M Antonio | Hamstring Injury |
| 3 | Huddersfield Town | 7 | P Billing | Back Injury |
| 4 | Watford | 7 | M Britos | Illness |
| 5 | Bournemouth | 6 | L Mousset | Illness |
| 6 | Everton | 6 | I Gueye | Hamstring Injury |
| 7 | Manchester United | 6 | A Young | Knee Injury |
| 8 | Liverpool | 6 | A Lallana | Muscular Injury |
| 9 | Brighton and Hove Albion | 5 | G Bong | Thigh |
| 10 | West Bromwich Albion | 5 | S Field | Calf Strain |
| 11 | Burnley | 5 | T Heaton | Fitness |
| 12 | Newcastle United | 5 | J Sanmartin Mato | Ankle Injury |
| 13 | Chelsea | 5 | A Christensen | Muscle Injury |
| 14 | Manchester City | 4 | J Stones | Conussion |
| 15 | Swansea City | 4 | A Rangel | Groin Injury |
| 16 | Stoke City | 4 | E Choupo-Moting | Groin Strain |
| 17 | Southampton | 3 | R Bertrand | Back Injury |
| 18 | Leicester City | 3 | M James | Achilles Injury |
| 19 | Tottenham Hotspur | 2 | H Winks | Ankle Injury |
| 20 | Arsenal | 1 | S Cazorla | Plantaris Injury |
We’ll allow them Santi Cazorla as an injured player since he was added to the list of 25 players for the second half of the season, which he wasn’t in the first half, but of course we know the chance of him playing at all this season has been very low indeed.
Looking at a few more stats for the match against the alien hordes we see that Stoke have six games in which they have conceded zero this season, while Arsenal have 14.
What is strange is that Stoke have only have 42 yellow cards – that is six fewer than Arsenal. Way out on top of the yellow league are of course West Ham who before this weekend’s games had 65. Arsenal go into the match with 48. Make of that what you will.
It will however not surprise you to know that only one team has fewer passes this season than Stoke, and that is Burnley. Stoke have 10,794 passes recorded this season. Arsenal are on 18,758. We could even end up with twice as many passes as Stoke by the end of the season if this process continues.
Their danger man in terms of breaking legs and otherwise disabling opposition players is Joe Allen who has had an extraordinary seven yellow yellows so far. The highest number of any player this season is eight.
Until 2002 Stoke were a club in League Two and they have crawled their way up the leagues since then and have reached 9th three times in their time in the Premier League and indeed in 2011/12 they actually played in the Europa League. Word is that European clubs made it quite clear that they didn’t want to have to experience this sort of thing again, and they haven’t.
Before Saturday’s games they were however lurking the lower reaches…
| Pos | Club | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts |
| 13 | West Ham United | 31 | 8 | 9 | 14 | 38 | 57 | -19 | 33 |
| 14 | Newcastle United | 30 | 8 | 8 | 14 | 30 | 40 | -10 | 32 |
| 15 | Swansea City | 30 | 8 | 7 | 15 | 25 | 42 | -17 | 31 |
| 16 | Huddersfield Town | 31 | 8 | 7 | 16 | 25 | 52 | -27 | 31 |
| 17 | Crystal Palace | 32 | 7 | 9 | 16 | 31 | 50 | -19 | 30 |
| 18 | Southampton | 31 | 5 | 13 | 13 | 29 | 46 | -17 | 28 |
| 19 | Stoke City | 31 | 6 | 9 | 16 | 29 | 58 | -29 | 27 |
| 20 | West Bromwich Albion | 32 | 3 | 11 | 18 | 24 | 50 | -26 | 20 |
So there is a chance they might actually be relegated this time, and possibly even start the descent to their spiritual home in the fourth division. Although we should not be too unfair in this, for Stoke have won a few things off and on including the second tier (1933 and 1963) the third tier (1993 an 2002) and the Southern League (1910 and 1915).
Stoke’s next match is at home to Tottenham, and one can only hope that they will save their industrial tactics for that game, and avoid having anyone picking up a multiplicity of cards against Arsenal.
- Arsenal and them. How its gone in the past
- Arsenal vs The Stone Age; this Sunday.
- Reputations are not related to reality, but once broken are hard to repair
From the Arsenal History Society
- The Arsenal collapse of autumn 1921: Knighton’s curious positional strategy
- From Arsenal’s first FA Cup semi to Diaby, Arteta, Wilshere and Debuchy recovering from injury all at once
I see your mistake, you are mixing up sports journalism with facts. See how easy it is when you remember that they aren’t the same thing.
For a site which spent a good few years preaching that the reason for arsenal’s poor results was due to its consistently high number of injuries, with Walter doing series upon series “proving” this fact, untold style. Then crowning this series by “proving” to us that these injuries were caused by the refs. To turn around and blame everybody and everything else and Stewart Robson for this perception only shows that the blog has no integrity.
Felix I think it might help if you actually read the article.