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By Tony Attwood
Actually, to clarify that headline, at the moment it is one player, but a mighty important one player. Gabriel Magalhaes (to give him the full name to distinguish him from the other Gabriels in the side), has been injured playing for Brazil, according to reports from TalkSport.
And to make it clearer, this is the Gabriel who has played 15 games this season and scored two goals. As yet, we don’t have news on how bad the injury is, and there is a week before the match against the Tiny Totts, but the fact is that he came off injured in the game against Senegal yesterday. In fact, he came off just after the one-hour mark, in what was supposed to be a friendly.
On the positive side, he was able to walk off the pitch unaided, or “trudged off” in media language. Brazil kept their lead and won the match. And to try and distract us from this, the media is starting to say that Arsenal are going to sign a Chelsea player who plays like Mbappe.
The only good bit of news is that Gabriel is not in the Brazil squad to play Tunisia, which means there is more time for him to recover – as long as Brazil don’t pretend there was no injury at all and force him back on the pitch. I wouldn’t put it past them.
Certainly, the Arsenal defence has been a key part of this season’s success so far. Indeed, a league table drawn up on the basis of goals against, instead of points, would show Arsenal top, with five conceded. And by the time we get to Sunderland in fourth in such a table, we are looking at clubs that have conceded twice as many as Arsenal.
Last season, after 11 games, Arsenal had conceded 12 goals, and the season before it was 11 – so in both cases the goals against tally has been halved. And we shouldn’t just how well the forwards are doing.
But there is also worrying news concerning Calafiori, who is said in the media to have returned to London early after getting injured. And it is being reported that Odegaard and Gabriel Jesus are not yet fit to play for the club. But the media is talking up the possibility of Madueke, Gyokeres, Martinelli and Havertz now being fit enough at least for the bench.
And what we can also say is that the summer spending spree has certainly helped the club cope with what has become the usual round of injuries, once again, far more than most clubs are getting.
But of course we can’t get carried away because there is yet another England game to be played – that being tonight – and it is being played even though it is totally and utterly pointless.
Now I don’t normally bother to publish international league tables because my focus is on Arsenal, but if I were to break that rule for the moment, we would see that England has 21 points with one game to play, and they are seven points above the mighty Albania in second place, followed by Serbia, Latvia and Andorra. The media are indeed celebrating the fact that England have won all seven games, and yes, that is jolly good, but it is not as if the country has played some tough opposition.
However, internationals are not my concern, except where they cause Arsenal players injuries, so fingers crossed for the final round of games before the return of real football. And now moving on…
Up to the end of last season, Arsenal had scored 2265 goals in the Premier League, having scored 79 goals fewer in the years of the Premier League than Manchester United, who have scored the most.
But although Arsenal are top of the Premier League at the moment (compared with Manchester United, who are seventh), the reality is that Arsenal have only scored one more goal than Manchester United in the league this campaign. In fact, Manchester City and Chelsea have both scored more than Arsenal this season.
Last season’s top scorer was Kai Havertz with 15 goals (nine in the league), but you will recall that on 12 February this year, he was reported to have a hamstring injury which in fact kept him out for the rest of the season.. Upon his return, he got a knee injury, which has kept him out ever since.
And yet amazingly Arsenal are four poins clear at the top of the league and the third highest scoring team in the Premier League without their prime centre forward. Quite remarkable.
