How international injuries have decimated the Premier League

 

• • Is the Premier League about to split in two?
  • Does form tell us anything? Yes but probably not what you thought…

 

The injury level is in the Premier League following the wholly ludicrous round of internationals is itself ludicrous.   Arsenal have seven players listed as injured,  but are by no means at the top of the list with Brighton and Manchester City on ten players each, and Brentford and Crystal Palace with nine men out. Aston Villa have eight.

Manchesteer United and Tottenham Hots are also on seven players down, Newcastle and Liverpool on six.  That these numbers are indeed ludicrous is easy to see for the disruption caused to clubs is obvious – made worse of course by the fact that it is only now that players are making their ways back to clubs to be assessed.   Many managers are still unsure who they are going to have at their disposal this weekend.

We know that Ben White has had surgery and is now in recovery, but as for Saka and Rice we are awaiting information.  Fortunately they each had the sense to reject England’s temptations to be “part of the squad.” 

But Tomiuasu may be available as a sub this weekend, as might be Calafiori.  Trossard seems less likely.  He came off injured while playing for Belgium against Israel.  It was ever thus.

That the game itself in which he was injured was pointless beyond all pointlessness can be seen by the resultant league table…

 

	Country	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	France	6	4	1	1	12	6	+6	13
2	Italy	6	4	1	1	13	8	+5	13
3	Belgium	6	1	1	4	6	9	-3	4
4	Israel	6	1	1	4	5	13	-8	4

 

As we can see from this table the result could not in any way have made any difference to anyone and yet Arsenal (the club that trains the player and pays all his wages) are forced to lose another player to injury.  This is just typical of the international organisations that in my view should be simply consigned to history so in the future supporters can shake their heads in wonder at how pathetically stupid clubs were ever to allow this to happen.

Harry Kane of course criticised clubs who did not let players go to play such games, but I think we can ignore anything he says now, as we have done in the past.

Tragically for Arsenal, Norway won their group overcoming the mighty  Kazakhstan and Solvenia so more injuriees might well be ahead for Arsenal’s capatain.

Nottingham Forest have escaped the slaughter more easily having just Danilo dos Santos de Oliveira and Ibrahim Sangare out with Elliot Anderson recovering or inideed perhaps by now recovered.

The last six games table show a gap between Nottingham Forest  and Arsenal of two points and two goals.

 

Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
3	Nottingham Forest	6	3	1	2	9	6	+3	10
11	Arsenal	6	2	2	2	10	9	+1	8

 

But as we noted recently Nottingham Forest are playing Manchester City, Manchester United and of course Arsenal in three of their next four fixtures.  And the reason they have that is because they, like a number of other clubs that have risen up the league of late, they have been having a few easier games while Arsenal have been battering away at other top four contenders.

Thus in this run of last six games Forest have played the likes of Fulham, Crystal Palace, Leicester City and West Ham United.    In their last three alone Arsenal have played Liverpool, Neewcastle United and Chelsa.

It does all even out in the end since even the Premier League can’t avoid Arsenal playing every other club twice, but the imbalance of late seems ludicrous.

Here’s the overall table now…

 

Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Liverpool	11	9	1	1	21	6	15	28
2	Manchester City	11	7	2	2	22	13	9	23
3	Chelsea	11	5	4	2	21	13	8	19
4	Arsenal	11	5	4	2	18	12	6	19
5	Nottingham Forest	11	5	4	2	15	10	5	19

The fact that Arsenal are only above Forest by one goal is misleading, given which other clubs that two teams have been playing.  And to be clear it is not so much that Arsenal have had this tough run of fixtures that bugs me, it is the way the commentators have been pointing out Arsenal’s “poor run” of results, without actually noticing how much easiesr the fixtures have been for everyone else.

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