Untold Injury Index – Gameweek 6

Posted on by Tony Attwood

Untold Injury Index – Gameweek 6

By Dale Higginbottom

Onto Gameweek six and it was a pretty uneventful week in the league to be honest. For us the major talking point is probably Wilshere’s now extended spell on the sidelines. It’s a big shame for him and the disappointing thing is that it just seems like the Vermaelen situation all over again, a great break-through season followed by and injury-ravaged one. Its a shame that the first lines of treatment didn’t work but as a medical team, they had to make the decision that is most likely to get the player back in the fastest time, it’s only when those methods fail that surgery is considered and unfortunately Jack it’s at that stage with his ankle.

For the rest of the team we had Bolton at home and, after last week’s defeat, we really needed three points but were we helped out by the injury situation?

A = Ankle J = Foot
B = Back K = Knee
C = Calf L = Achilles
D = Dead Leg M = Muscle
E = Hamstring R = Rib
F = Fatigue/Lack of Fitness S = Shoulder
G = Groin T = Thigh
H = Head Injury/Concussion U = Unknown
I = Illness Z = Broken Leg

Arsenal Vs Bolton (3-0)

Injuries Arsenal (6 + 0S) Bolton (6 + 1S)
Goalkeeper N/A N/A
Defence Vermaelen (A,4), Squillaci (C,5), Djourou (E,2) Ricketts (L), Mears (Z), Alonso (J), Cahill (I)
Midfield Wilshere (A,6), Diaby (A,6), Benayoun (M,1) Davis (K), Lee (Z)
Attack N/A N/A
Additional issues Rosicky returned from injury and started on the bench. N/A
Suspended N/A Klasnic

Chelsea Vs Swansea (4-1)

Injuries Chelsea (2 + 1S) Swansea (5 + 0S)
Goalkeeper N/A N/A
Defence N/A Tate (Z), Caulker (K)
Midfield Essien (K,6) Bodde (K), Agustien (E)
Attack Sturridge (K,1) Beattie (A)
Additional issues N/A Graham and Taylor both returned to the squad, tayler played the whole game, Graham was a second-half sub.
Suspended Alex N/A

Stoke Vs Man Utd (1-1)

Injuries Stoke (5 + 0S) Man Utd (7 + 0S)
Goalkeeper N/A N/A
Defence Higginbotham (K) Rafael (S,6), Vidic (C,5), Evans (J,1), Smalling (G,1)
Midfield Diao (U) Gibson (A,4), Cleverley (F,2)
Attack Fuller (L), Sidibe (L), Jones (E) Rooney (E,1)
Additional issues N/A Welbeck returned to the squad, starting on the bench and making a second-half sub appearance. Hernandez was forced off after 11 minutes with a dead leg.
Suspended N/A N/A

Wigan Vs Tottenham (1-2)

Injuries Wigan (3 + 0S) Tottenham (7 + 0S)
Goalkeeper N/A N/A
Defence Alcaraz (T), Boyce (E) Gallas (C,5), Dawson (L,2)
Midfield N/A Pienaar (G,5), Lennon (G,3), Huddlestone (A,2), Kranjcar (A,1)
Attack Rodallega (K) Pavlyuchenko (E,1)
Additional issues Gohouri returned from injury and started the game. His return was cut short by picking up and second yellow. Sandro returned to the squad and started the game, only being substituted in the 90th minute.
Suspended N/A N/A

Liverpool Vs Wolves (2-1)

Injuries Liverpool (2 + 0S) Wolves (4 + 0S)
Goalkeeper N/A N/A
Defence Johnson (E,5), Agger (R,1) Foley (A), Zubar (G), Craddock (E)
Midfield N/A N/A
Attack N/A Ebanks-Blake (K)
Additional issues Gerrard returned after an appearance in the Carling Cup. He came off the bench late in the game..Kelly also returned, playing the whole game. Fletcher was a doubt but he was in the squad and came on in the second half.
Suspended N/A N/A

Man City Vs Everton (2-0)

Man City (1 + 0S) Everton (1 + 0S)
Goalkeeper N/A N/A
Defence N/A N/A
Midfield De Jong (J,5) N/A
Attack N/A Anichebe (G)
Additional issues N/A Cahill was forced off after 66 minutes with a shin injury.
Suspended N/A N/A

Top the the injury tree this week is shared by Man United and Spurs with seven injuries each. Arsenal are still not too far away with six but we can’t really say that about Chelsea, City and Liverpool who are well down on the injury totals (lucky for them). I think six injuries seems to be about our default position. Our average last season was six injuries per game (or just short of) and this season seems to have some of the same patterns as last. The difference this time is that we have a bigger squad to cope with some of these once all the new signings settle in.

Three points gained and with a similar injury situation to our opponents we would’ve expected nothing less for a home fixture against a team that have been struggling for form (although given Bolton’s fixtures that’s not entirely their fault).

Onto United and well, what did I say last week? I’ll remind you

“United have started well this season and I think we can see that (when compared to last season) when Rooney plays well, United play well. I wonder what would happen if he got injured?“

Well, Rooney IS injured and United were certainly given a game at Stoke. Seven injuries is difficult to cope with (even with a squad like United’s) and with Hernandez also picking up an injury early in the game it was down to Berbatov and Owen to lead the forward line. Welbeck is still coming back from and injury so it seems quite bad up front as well as in defence for United. We’ll see how they cope in the next few games.

Quite an easy week for Liverpool, all considered. Playing at home with two injuries, no suspensions, against a team with twice as many injuries. There same can be said for Chelsea who, for the second season running, appear to be missing the injury bus each week. I’m sure it’ll be stopping outside Stamford Bridge sometime soon and Chelsea will climb right on board.

Similarly, we had to look hard for an injury in the Man City Vs Everton game. Only one a piece so not a lot to comment about there, so I won’t.

And the Tiny Totts also got three points despite being in a pretty poor injury state, although they were playing Wigan so maybe nothing to write home about there. I’m hoping their situation doesn’t get too much better over the next five days so things might be at least even on the injury-front going into the derby. They’ve also got a European fixture this week so we’ll keep an eye on that.

So, that’s two of the three home games in a row out of the way and two very good wins. Positive thoughts are starting to flow through the club again and three points on Wednesday will certainly help maintain that ahead of the derby on Sunday. I think the results and performances will hopefully give the players some confidence against Spurs who equally have had a difficult start to the season and are also suffering with their fair share of injuries. Whether our latest additions to the crocked list (announced by Wenger today) will be fit for the game or not remains to be seen but we’ll still be able to put out plenty of quality players.

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Untold Arsenal – the (fairly) complete index

(please note we’re still working on getting these indexes into shape – the media, referees and corruption indexes are just about done, but others are still awaiting a make over)

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4 Replies to “Untold Injury Index – Gameweek 6”

  1. What a difference a Rooney makes to Utd it seems. We can hate him but have to admit that he is important not just for their attack but also for their defending from the front. He is not a lazy player and does come back to help out his defence if needed.
    And the other strikers are not that helpful like that and it does seem to affect them.

  2. Come the end of the season it might be interesting to run this data up against some of the team-by-team variables. Average squad age, height, weight, training facilities, pitch size, nationality etc. and then (although this would take a serious amount of work) to do a separate player by player analysis, grouping them according to position, size, weight, age, nationality etc.

    In the process it would be interested to see which (if any) Arsenal-sphere memes are debunked and what it actually means to have a ‘frail’ squad.

    Just a though =)

  4. This is not a dig. The work you do with the injury index is great, but it only shows how incapable our club is when it comes to dealing with injuries. We have been the worst for a few seasons running, which is hardly coincidence. The training methods are clearly wrong. I will refer to the work of Raymond Verheijen, who some of you are aquaint with. The problem often is that clubs hire fitness coaches whos expertise are other sports than football. A running coach might know how to train someone to endure a 50km, that doesn’t mean he can train a footballer to endure 2x-3x games a week. My point is that the training methods are so different from one and the other, which isn’t positive and rather have a largely negative effect on players.

    Forget a defensive coach, what we need is someone like Verheijen.

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